Mock, Paper, Scissors

My good friend, Dr. Zaius raised an excellent point on his essential blog, Zaius Nation, about my strident tone regarding Obama, a point that I have been a bit worried about myself:

If I have any regrets about this event it is that it happened on a Friday, thus it is guaranteed to be buried by the media over the weekend. But I can’t complain. Even “I hate Carebear” Tengrain gave a brief ‘hrumph’ about it.

Here’s the deal that I want to clear up: In spite of my strident tone, I don’t hate The Carebear. I want him to succeed. I want the US to succeed. I am not wishing ill will on him or on us, not even on the most retrograde GOPer out there (except of course for the war criminals Chimpy and Blam-Blam, but let’s not split hairs).

I find no satisfaction in I-told-you-so-ism, and I want to be proved wrong. I don’t want to be saying at the end of Obama’s term thank god that’s over. I will be the first person to admit that I got him wrong, I will buy the first round of drinks, I will eat crow in public.

After 30 years of the country being figuratively torn apart by GOP-driven voodoo economics, class warfare, and the culture wars, perhaps I had too high expectations that a transformative figure like Obama could mend what had been done to us, or more accurately what we had allowed to be done to us. I realize that it will take years to undo the damage. I want us to get back on the road to being a functional society again.

I hope Obama gets started on that soon. I’m afraid that he’s wasted 25% of his presidency. If he continues to be so passive, he will only have one term.

I still hope that Obama can mend us, I have serious concerns that he (or maybe anyone) is capable of fixing us. I am greatly encouraged by his performance at the GOP shindig where he vivisected the Pig People. I hope he continues to do that.

Say what you will about Chimpy McStagger, he drove his agenda. Of course it was a psycho dry-drunk’s hate-filled, rage-induced nightmare that has had the sorry effect of crippling the country, but regardless, he plowed ahead. Obama needs to be more like Chimpy.

(God, I cannot believe I just said that.)

Thank you, Dr. Zaius, for forcing me to be a bit introspective. I owe you one.

Today marks the first year anniversary of The Carebear’s inauguration. It was a year ago today that we watched — with great joy — our first black president take the oath of office from our stumbling and bumbling wingnut Chief Justice John “Liza with a Z” Roberts.

I think it is safe to say that all of us were filled with a certain amount of pride, and maybe some unreasonable amount of hope. Somehow we had survived Chimpy’s Reign of Error. I remember some earnest discussion of the fear that somehow, Blam-Blam would orchestrate a coup, but it was all unfounded (although he has not gone quietly into that good night, so to speak).

And so the Obama fan boys waited with baited breath for the unicorns to appear. They have not. Others of us waited for the indictments for crimes that the previous administration committed to appear, and they have not. Some realists with lower expectations waited for signs of incremental progress to appear, and to some degree they have. For instance, The Carebear kept his promise to send more troops to Afghanistan. And that’s about the only campaign promise (of any prominence) he has kept.

The Carebear’s actions to date have almost no relationship to his tag line of Change that you can believe in, that is, unless you are a Wall Street Banker, or some other big donor class campaign contributor and corporatist. His position during the campaign was as a corporate-friendly slightly left of center candidate, and his actions to date have been what you would expect of such a person. And he quickly ditched his base who worked so hard to get him elected.

And then last night happened…

The common inside-the-beltway wisdom and the chatter from the pundits in the media are all declaring that this is a wake-up call for the Dims (oh crap, I gotta take a shot of booze!), and that they must accept the GOP’s agenda and move to the right. Now then, no one knows what the GOP’s agenda is — none of ‘em have offered up a single concrete proposal on HCR, for instance. Just opposition. And honey, no one does oppo better than the GOP. They don’t know how to govern (and don’t seem to care much), it’s all about noise and fury. And money.

The same Chattering Classes are telling us that without the 60 Senators, HCR is dead. Well, the Dims only had the 60-seat supermajority for about 4 months: anyone remember how long it took to seat Al Franken? When did Arlen Spector switch sides? There was that whole Bloggo thing… and honestly, what good did it do the Dims to have the supermajority when Traitor Joe and Ben Nelson decided to extort the entire country? Something still came out of the end of the meat grinder, just something no one really liked.

Also, remember Chimpy McStagger? Chimpy never had the magic number of GOPers in the Senate (in fact he had 17 fewer GOPers than Obama has Dims right now), and yet he managed to wreak havoc on the country and the world for eight terrible years. The GOP used Reconciliation to cut the Dims out of the process all the time; the Dims can do this too.

So, no, the end is not neigh. It is pretty much the same as it was yesterday and the day before that. Quit your hand wringing. If you are absolutely dejected, call your representatives and tell them to buck up. Call your Senators and tell them that you are watching them, too.

And if you can stomach it, call The Carebear. Tell him to lead for once. If he wants something, he has to fight for it, because the craven and cowardly Dims are going to leave him high and dry. And frankly, he deserves it.

e here at Mock, Paper, Scissors get our fair share of criticism for being light, and humorous while the times around us are dark, and we plead guilty as charged. MPS is not a news source, we serve to find items that appall, amuse, and horrify us and we dish it up, steaming hot to you, our readers and fellow Scissorheads.

So while other lefty and progressive blogs might ponder and write great tracts and thesises (thesi?), all well-researched and brilliantly composed, we shoot spitballs at the targets. While other, greater bloggers provide insight and analysis of the news of the day, we shoot spitballs at the targets. Where others provide stories that will make you weep, we shoot spitballs at the targets.

Which brings us to the presumably lefty President Carebear, who tells us that “the road to recovery is never straight.” We’ve been looking at this road for over a year now, and we find we can agree with him on this point. Some of us feel that this road is particularly crooked, but more on Timmy Geithner later.

That said, Larry Summers tells us that “A year ago, the question was would we have a depression? Today everyone agrees that the recession is over.” Now Mr. Summers might have a vested interest in telling us that everyone agrees that the Great Recession is over because he might very well be one the principle architects of said Depression as he helped the GOP congress on their campaign of deregulating the financial markets during the Clinton years. But no one ever mentions that.

Frank Rich this week calls for Robert Rubin’s head to be on a pike, and if the NYTimes is suddenly aware that the US Citizenry, the angry villagers that we are, are about ready to storm the castle with torches and pitchforks and therefore they better tepidly embrace populism, well, things must be bad indeed. Rich does an admirable job of laying out the topic, but he comes to it many months after Matt Taibbi — who was verily beaten up by the NYTimes for suggesting that Rubin and the Big Banks were in collusion.

Bloomberg tells us that “White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he stood by his earlier statements that the president had full confidence in [Secretary Timothy] Geithner.” This is good to know because these are pretty much the exact words that they used when trying to get Tom Daschle to withdraw his nomination for HHS secretary, once they became aware that his tax problem and being a lobbyist were not being ignored. Well, that and that Mr. Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger. Mr. Geithner allegedly helped Goldman Sachs by demanding AIG pay them in full for the bets that they had made (money laundering?) and then demanded that they not reveal that he had demanded this (cover up?).

So, that not-straight road to recovery brings us to the price of oil, which at $84/barrel is $1.50 below the price in 2008 when we saw the economy run into the wall. We might want to fill up our tanks today and then sell and siphon it off tomorrow for a tidy profit.

And speaking of profit or the lack thereof, our housing market continues to deflate, and homeowners are suddenly left with a mortgage that is greater than the value of their homes. The Python is about to swallow the pig, so to speak, as the ARMs that were awarded during the hight of the bubble are about to come due for their big adjustment. Keep your eye on this story and see if the foreclosure rate jumps, or if people will be able to negotiate better terms.

But not to worry, future residents of that non-existent Depression of Mr. Summers, you can always squat in the abandoned retail buildings that went up slap-dash during the boom, and are currently being abandoned in a break-neck pace. Of course, they will probably come crashing down around your heads because in the enthusiasm to have a Starbucks everywhere, few of these strip malls with flat roofs were built to last.

Well, at least we piggy americans have enough to eat. Except that we don’t. Besides the much-noted story that 25% of US children are on food stamps, we learned recently to expect some serious crop failures as much of the world heads into another year of draught. The Joad’s story, set in the other Depression, not Larry Summer’s, might come full circle, once they get on that not-straight road to recovery.

Scissorheads –

Thanks to you it has been another perfect year – from the bottom of my toes, to the tip of my nose, I want to thank each of you for the fun, the camaraderie, and well, the snark, that has made Mock, Paper, Scissors the home of the most incorrigible spitballers on the web^TM, the Scissorheads.

You see, it isn’t about me or Tex (the best unindicted co-conspirator and partner in crime that I could ever want), it’s about all of us. We choose to band together and cast our lot against outrageous fortune (to rip off that Shakespeare dude), laugh at the pontificating poltroons (God, I miss Xristi – has it really been three years?), and skewer the rest. There is no rock unturned, there are no sacred cows with this crowd. We take no prisoners.

And at the same time, there are no kinder, gentler people than the Scissorheads. We would give a hand to a leper, we’ve helped to feed the hungry, we’ve sent letters to the powerful to beg them to show mercy to the powerless. We have our voices, and we have used them well.

So here’s to you. Thank you for another Perfect Year.

Best Regards,

Tengrain

Now that the statute of limitations is up, I’m heading back to the scene of the crime, so to speak. Swiming pools, movie stars. But just for a few days, and then coming back home.

I’m taking the laptop with me, and Dawg willing (and the creek don’t rise), I will be able to find an internet connection down there.

Regards,

Tengrain

…when we at Mock, Paper, Scissors link to all of our friends and allies in the blog roll.

“Why do you do that, ‘Grain” you ask.

We do it because we like you, we really like you! You see, the more sites that link to your blog, the higher your technorati rating goes, your Google rank improves, and nothing but good comes of it for each of your individual sites. It’s our way of saying thank you for writing and working to make the internet such a fun place to learn and play.

And while I do not always make it to everyone’s website in the course of a month (though I try, lordy I try), please know that we appreciate your on-going effort to set the world right.

If I left anyone out, please put a note in the comments – it was an oversight, I swear. Remember, I always liked you best.

• Beliefnet
• Contextual Criticism
• Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes
• One Pissed-off Veteran
• The Friendly Atheist
• Un*enslaved*
• Egg Town
• A Line Drive Up the Middle
• Beautiful Day Rule
• Just Add Wonder
• Little Bang Theory
• Tales of an Obsessive Man
• That’s Why
• The Coffee Messiah
• There will be bread
• Thorne’s World
• When will I use this
• White Dogs
• Wyld’s Q & A
• A bit conciliatory
• AgitProp
• An Earth-bound Misfit
• Bill Fisher
• Blah3
• Blue Gal
• Border Explorer
• Brendan Calling
• Buelahman’s Redstate Revolt
• BuzzFlash
• California Dreamin’
• Canada, eh?
• Cap’n Dyke, Pirate Queen
• Capitol Hill Blues
• Chef loves beer
• Cheyanne’s Campsite
• Clusterf*** Nation
• Comrade Kevin’s Chrestomathy
• d r i f t g l a s s
• Dave’s Daily Dump
• Dean Wormer
• Demeur
• Despite Logic
• Distributor Cap NY
• Fighting Liberals
• Fitness for the Occasion
• FranIAM
• Freidabee
• Fried Green al-Qaedas
• From the Left
• Gadflying
• Galt Gone Wild
• Godless Liberal Homo
• Hill’s Country
• House of the Rising Sons
• I Am TRex
• Impeach the Mother Fucker Already
• Impeachment and other dreams
• Intrepid Flame
• Its my Right to be Left of the Center
• Joe the Philospher
• John McSame 4 President
• Jon Swift’s place
• Journeys with Jood
• Just Go Stand Over There Somewhere…
• Just go stand over there somewhere…
• Just Peace Now
• Kelly, the little black dog
• Las Vegas
• Last Exit Before Hooterville
• Late for the sky
• Left in a Boite
• Liberality
• Liberty Street
• Life’s Journey
• Luminous Ether
• Mallard Fillmore’s Bathtub
• Mauigirl’s Meanderings
• Media Crashers
• Media Needle
• Monkeyfister
• Moon Rays
• My 2 Cents
• My Liberal Agenda
• My Saturday Eveing Post
• NTodd’s Place
• OKJimm's eggroll emporium
• Old & N the Way
• Ornery Bastard
• Outside the Interzone
• padre mickey’s dance party
• Political Graffiti
• Political Teen Tidbits
• Politics Plus
• preserve, protect and defend
• Pygalgia
• Ragebot!
• Ramblings of a Madwoman
• Raw Dog Buffalo
• Rawrahs
• Realitology
• Reconstitution 2.0
• Relaxed Politics
• Retzilian Rendezvous
• Revolutionary Act
• Salmon Alley
• Satanists for Huckabee
• Sharkey’s Goat Shack
• South Carolina
• Sprawling Ramshackle Compound
• Stringer
• Suzi Riot
• Symbols of Decay
• The Adventures of SnuffDoggyDog
• The Burning Taper
• The Fluffington Post
• The Future Was Yesterday
• The Galloping Beaver
• The Gaytheist Agenda
• The Great Endarkenment
• The Largest Minority
• The Loonatyk Sisters Own Private Assylum
• The Neural Gourmet
• The old hippies groovy blog
• The Omnipotent Poohbah
• The Public Intellectual
• the quaker agitator
• The Sermonette
• The Siren’s Chronicles
• The Underground Radical
• The White House Plumber
• This Modern World
• Three Sticks
• Tilly Screams
• Tome of the Unknown Writer
• Under the Lobsterscope
• Unsolved: Mr. E’s Blog Stump
• Utah Savage
• Vagabond Scholar
• Walk of the fallen
• Wampum
• Watergate Summer
• Welcome Back to Pottersville
• Welcome to Potterville 2
• Yikes!
• Zen Cabin
• Boxer Rebellion
• Cat in the Bag
• Coffee, Milk, Toast, & Jam
• Electronic Cerebretomy
• Evil Slutopia
• Exit, Pursued by a bear
• I, Splotchy
• L'ennui Mélodieux
• Midnight \Noise
• Ribbed for Your Pleasure
• The Eclectic Witch
• Travelling through time and space
• Zaius Nation
• All Hat and No Cattle
• All the way from Oy to Vey
• Blast Off!
• Capitol Punishment
• Commaner Other’s Otherwhirled
• Dark Black
• Dependable Renegade
• Drinking Liberally in New Milford
• Dubya Speak
• EDITORIALS FROM HELL’S LEADING DAILY NEWSPAPER
• GLH Playground
• Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes
• I can’t believe it’s not a democracy
• I was just wondering
• Impeachment and other dreams
• Jones Town
• Les Enragés.org
• Live! Rude! Girl!
• Monkey Muck
• Nailing Jello to the Wall
• Namaste
• Notions Capital
• Proud2bHumble
• Que Sera Sara
• Rants from the Rookery
• Scarabus
• Seeds of Doubt
• Sorghum Crow’s General Store
• Stu Blue
• The Aristocrats
• The Grumbling Dragon
• The Illiterate Electorate
• The Liberal Journal
• Wee Mousie’s Cinema Burlesque
• Wolcott
• You are hated
• Zen Comix

Folks -

We’re recruiting new Scissorheads this weekend, and asking all of our lurkers to leave a comment. You see, we want to like you, but we can’t if we don’t meet you.

I’m going to violate the Prime Directive of Blogging (the No Whining clause) and tell you that it is disheartening to put out some pretty good snark, day after day but have few people comment. I did the math recently and for the number of page views Mock, Paper, Scissors has in a day, and the number of comments, well, it comes out to about 1%.

Now, We’re very grateful for the 1%, because our Scissorheads are the internet’s band of incorrigible spitballers^TM but we think you must be pretty special to come by every day –shows that you have discerning taste — even if you don’t leave a comment.

So, come’on, what’s stopping you? Leave a comment, and Welcome to MPS, it is good to have you with us.

Regards,

Tengrain

(Delurkers Weekend at Blue Gal’s place, too)

Scissorheads –

As warned last week, I have updated the ol’ MPS to give her a new look and feel. So you might see some big changes if you are using Safari, not as many changes if using Firefox, and probably few few changes if using Internet Explorer.

You can download (for free!) these browsers and have a better MPS viewing experience:

• Safari — for Windows and for the Mac (this will give the complete range of change I’m putting into the redesign)
• Firefox — this will give you much of the redesign

You don’t have to do this – MPS will work pretty much as always in IE.

My father enlisted the four of us kids to help my mother quit smoking. If we could show him that we had stopped her from finishing a cigarette, we could have an extra half hour of TV each night.

My mother, taking a long drag on her cigarette, smiled and told us that she wanted to quit — nasty habit — and she would not get mad at us for helping her. The only rule we had was not to lecture her, at least not in public.

(more…)

TRex posts again. Go pay him a visit.

…today has been filled with going to Farmers’ Markets (yes plural) to stock up for the week.

This afternoon I will attend a memorial for a friend and former colleague (she actually used to be my boss a few jobs back) who recently died of pancreatic cancer; when she was diagnosed, of course, it was untreatable. You gotta love our best healthcare system in the world.

I may write something more about her later, but let’s just leave it that I’m in a bit of shock. I thought she was likely to be immortal or at least the last one standing at the end. She was a force of nature. (Everyone recalls that I have a fondness for people with strong personalities, right?) She was also almost exactly my age, so I feel this shock perhaps with a bit of selfish recognition that, well, I might not be the exception to the rule, either.

It is time to take a more serious look at the death of the media than we have in the past. We here at Mock, Paper, Scissors have said that the world has a need for journalists and journalism (and we still believe that), but it does not have a need for newspapers.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I love my morning paper. There is nothing like reading the SF Chronicle with my trusty red pen in hand and my cuppa coffee in the other. It would be a shame for the kind of editing thrill I get each morning to just vanish. But I digress.

The problem with newspapers — and the much-shouted death of the media — comes down to the business model, and I cannot stress this enough. US Newspapers, the physical dead-tree stuff, are not in the business of bringing you the news. The US Newspaper business model is about putting print advertising in your hands. Think about that for just a moment, the absolute inefficiency of it. Everyday hundreds of people work to bring to your door a bit of print with all the ads that Corporate America wants you to have in your hands. Each day! It is amazing.

If US Newspapers could continue publishing without newsrooms, they would. In fact, they are trying to do just that.

This is the thing we are seeing right now, this very minute: US Newspapers are laying off reporters, closing bureaus, canceling entire sections of their “content” — generally the features sections, and local sections; sports and business are sacred. Simultaneously, they are raising subscription rates for less content, and turning more and more to wire services to create fill for in-between the advertisements.

This is clearly not sustainable. And if you notice, this has nothing to do with the Internet.

The US Newspapers are telling us that the Internet is killing them, that Craig’s List is killing them, and so on. While I think that the Internet plays a role, it is not the role of media-killer anymore than radio or television killed the newspaper. The Internet is not a competitor, it is a delivery mechanism. It still requires content.

Last time I checked, the Internet was a global phenomenon, accessible in Europe, Asia, Japan, etc… Oddly, the newspapers in Europe and elsewhere (but not the US) are surviving the Internet age. European papers get most of their funding from selling the papers, not selling the advertising. The Guardian is owned by a public trust, and it is not strictly speaking a for-profit enterprise.

Why is this difference significant, you ask?

Because with real content, really well researched journalism and a focus on excellence, the readership grows. They know in Europe that they had better put out some real content, good content that serves their readers well. If they cut reporters, bureaus, close down feature sections, Europeans are going to stop reading the papers there, just like we have here.

US newspapers are not losing readers because of free news on the Internet, they are losing readers because the print content is going away. If Newspapers stop covering the news, especially the local news, then the newspapers have stopped doing what they do best and what their readers demand of them. No wonder the readers are fleeing: they are trying to find out what is going on in their world.

Case in point: I cannot find out about what is going on at San Jose City Hall reading the San Jose Mercury News, they don’t cover it, or at least not all of it. I can find out what is going on only by reading the City of San Jose’s website, and various blogs from local concerned citizens and activists. This is what I meant by the need for journalists and journalism. The web has made us all journalists.

There is a lot of noise about making newspapers’ websites accessible for subscribers only, and as the NY Times Select showed us, it is a failed model. The news organizations discovered two things with it: 1) no one wanted to pay for access, and 2) no one accessed it and their ad rates dropped.

Just like a blog (for instance, Mock, Paper, Scissors — if I may be so bold), US newspapers need to create compelling content to bring readers to their sites and keep them coming back. Making readers pay for AP stories is not going to be the business model that saves the news industry.

I don’t pretend to know what the next model will be for the newspapers, but I do know that real content will drive readers to it, regardless of the delivery mechanism. I hope that it will be the Internet. I’d like to save the trees.

Scissorheads –

It is exactly one year ago today that Mock, Paper, Scissors changed forever: TexBetsy decided to give us a hand here and join the snarkitude.

Now, she reminds me, that it was supposed to be temporary, but as my parents used to say to me whenever they caught be doing something, ahem, not becoming of a gentlemen, “What today is a vice will tomorrow become a habit,” Tex has stayed on.

I am grateful for her continued presence here, and have often said that she provides the soul that makes MPS a step above the brand X snarky blogs. And I think that all good Scissorheads agree. Betsy’s posts often have the most comments of all, are often picked up by more serious and thoughtful bloggars elsewhere, and generally give us the veneer of class that we so desperately need. Scissorheads may be the incorrigible band of spitballers on the Web and Tex is absolutely essential in this spitballing effort because, frankly, she has the best aim and unerring sense of what a really important story is. I have yet to see her post a farting penguin video, for instance.

Please join me in applauding Tex’s anniversary here at MPS and let’s convince her to stay on. She is the best unindicted co-conspirator and partner in crime that a boy can have.

Regards,

Tengrain

(I’m keeping this on top for the holiday weekend – Come’on Scissorheads, we can cross the finish line with pride! — Fresh snark below.)

Scissorheads —

We are down to the last few days of the Million Can March, and we need to take stock of how we are doing. As you know, the goal is to raise one million cans of food (along with all of our leftie brethren bloggers) across the internet for our local food banks. We want to have it all in place by July 4th, as hunger does not take a holiday.

Besides being altruistic lefties, the second part of the goal is to co-opt any of the ridiculous Tea Party activities that the very selfish right is putting on. Instead of screaming like loons that we are being overtaxed during this Second Great Depression we are doing something positive for our communities. Oh, and hopefully they will continue cluelessly to invoke “teabagging” as a verb. It makes me giggle.

So here’s the deal: donate some food, some money, and/or some time to your local food banks. Come back here and report your contribution in the comments and we will give Rev. Phat over at the Unruly Mob our totals.

Remember, “Yes We Can,” is more than a slogan.

ere at Mock, Paper, Scissors, we have been enjoying all the June weather in California, and of course being Gay Pride Month, we’ve been having fun with a month-full of gay dance music for our recurring Flashback Friday feature.

Of course, there is a more serious side to the month of Pride.

The fight for LGBT (and sometimes Q) civil rights is far from over. It was born 40 years ago with the now-famous Stonewall riots, and has continued through the Reagan-era culture wars, the Bush-era culture wars, the very damaging Clinton-era culture wars (probably the most damaging of all), and the Chimpy-era culture wars. Oddly, the Reagan and Bush reigns of terror were mostly benign negligence, and real lasting damage with the notoriously flawed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) and the cynical Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA) both of which were inflicted under a charismatic and allegedly liberal Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who quite literally squandered his mandate in the first term and had no political capital to spend in his second term, being too busy fighting for his political legacy after having a hummer while in office.

America finds itself, once again, with a popular Democratic president who has a real mandate to change the country. Will this president actually stand up for all Americans or just some? And if so, when will he do it?

The Democratic Party faithful keep telling the Alphabet Block to keep patient, wait for your turn, there are more important issues to be worked through what with the economy in free fall, two wars raging overseas, healthcare reform, yadda-yadda-yadda. It sounds familiar, because that was what the Party Faithful said in 1992, and I think history will repeat itself.

We have already seen the financial reforms walked back by Little Timmy Geithner – expect another jobless recovery and another destructive economic bubble before the Carebear is out of office. We are now watching healthcare reform being walked back as corporate money floods into Congress to eliminate a public option (and since when did mandatory health insurance become the same thing as universal healthcare? But that’s another post…); the wars rage on because no one is willing to stop them (we don’t even see coverage in the papers any more, but I suspect that someone is making money off of it still), Gitmo, wiretapping, all of it, all of the campaign promises both directly stated and indirectly implied by his mouthpieces are being walked back.

Last week, we reported on the disgusting brief that the Carebear’s Department of Justice filed defending DOMA, that unfavorably compared marriage equality to pederasty and incest — as far as I can tell it did not include bestiality (see picture), but I was too disgusted to finish reading it. DADT, which can be halted with a single signature continues unabated while yet another fact-finding commission investigates feasibility.

The Carebear fanboys have been virulent trying to squash any dissent, and the hilariously tone-deaf and out of whack Kossacks have been buying the Cool-Aid in bulk. It is embarrassing how they are walking away from a civil rights/human rights issue because it clashes with one of their core beliefs that we are living in some sort of magical world with the Carebear who brings all goodness and light. I remember the same groupthink during the beginning of the failed Clinton administrations, too.

The only bright spot in all of this is that for once, the LGBT (and sometimes Q) is fighting back. There is supposed to be a big LGBT Democratic Party fundraiser this Thursday, and all the A-list gays are dropping out and not only not attending, they are not donating; there are active protest planned for outside the event, and some (allegedly) inside. The last thing that any of the A-list gays want is to cross a protest by their peers to attend a booze and schmooze with Joe Biden.

The only thing that the Party understands is money, and if the Alphabet takes away the ATM card, it gets noticed very fast.

The Carebear (or at least someone in the Administration) noticed, and they have hurriedly put together a cocktail party for the end of the month at the White House itself to schmooze the angry gays. It isn’t working. Again, the A-list is refusing to go and so there is yet a second FAIL on the administration.

If you made it this far, congratulations! Please consider clicking this link to The Powerline and signing the petition. It is asking Nancy Pelosi to expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and all its subsequent revisions and codifications to declare it the public policy of the United States that discrimination based on LGBT status is prohibited.

(Hat tip: LiberalDemDave’s blog – Dave’sDailyDump)

The wailing and gnashing of teeth is almost palpable – can you feel it? The Xristian right claims that it is an oppressed minority, the mainstream conservatives wail and bemoan their outcast state, and the left feels completely abandoned by the chimera that is Barack Obama. For just about everyone — except for the Traitor Joes and Arlen Specters of the Democratic Party — the honeymoon is over.

I told you so.

Ever since he threw his hat in the ring, a handful of lefty bloggers said that The Carebear was a terrible candidate in what turned out to be a very good year. We could have elected Jeffrey Dahmer’s ice box with a hefty majority, that is how much the country was ready for change after eight years of Chimpy McStagger’s inept rule. It didn’t matter who it was, as long as it was someone new.

There is a reason why (back then) Hillary Clinton was the Iceberg Lettuce of politics and Barack Obama was her Dressing on the Side: safe, bland, predictable; and I might add with no convictions, and no guiding principles, except whatever the Terry McAuliffes of the world told them we wanted to hear. Predictably, the both of them, the two worst candidates out of a large and deep team, ended up slugging it out damaging each other as best they could, while the GOP sat back and laughed.

In the end, the business-friendly center left candidate (Dressing-on-the-Side) beat out the business friendly center right candidate (Iceberg Lettuce), and he easily beat out the reactionary right GOP candidate, Grandpa Walnuts.

But who actually won?

The status quo.

Who actually lost?

We all did.

Am I bitter? Yes, like an aspirin.

Candidate Carebear said (always vaguely) whatever any constituent group wanted to hear, even when it contradicted what he said only moment before; he had literally no record for anyone to check to see how he actually ever voted.

Everyone on the left read his tea leaves and said that he was on their side for this issue or for that issue, even though he never explicitly said he was in favor of anything. One of my favorite gags here at MPS from the last primary was that when he was asked what his position was on any topic his answer was “What Hillary said, but said better.”

I lost blogging friends for that one, both Carebear supporters and Iceberg Lettuce supporters.

So why the angst, you ask, why now?

Well, we are about 5 months into the new presidency, we are still fighting two of Chimpy’s wars, the rich are getting bailed out while the working stiffs are getting stiffed, gays & lesbians are thrown under the bus by that fierce advocate, single-payer healthcare is officially off the table, there is no movement at all to investigate — let alone prosecute — any of Chimpy and Companies’ war crimes, our phones are still being tapped, torture is being defended, Gitmo most likely will not be shut down, and women are being terrorized into forced pregnancies by Xristian Xrazies with guns. Right wing domestic terror is taking hold of the country, but no one in charge is willing to call it that. It might upset the Malkkkins of the world.

Take the actions of James von Brun, the white separatist who went on a shooting spree at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes von Brunn as “a frequent contributor to virulently anti-Semitic and racist online forums,” who was banned from the racist online forum Stormfront after he apparently threatened a moderator who requested that he “tone down the implied threats of violence in his posts.”

An acquaintance of von Brunn’s, John de Nugent called von Brunn a genius but described the shooting as the act of “a loner and a hothead.”

The responsible white separatist community condemns this. It makes us look bad.

I’ve said it here before, and I will say it again now: This is Ronnie Reagan’s eighth term. Nothing has changed. Nothing.

But here’s the kicker: The Carebear will be a one-term president, and the next one will be a GOPer with a familliar name: Jeb Bush. You read it here first.

I would say that I condemn all this, it makes us look bad, but it seems redundant.

I know this is a WWI poem, but it resonates with me, even for WWII, which was, you know, “the good war.”

As many of you know, my father was a Marine in the South Pacific during World War II and he was wounded during the battle for Guadalcanal. He was taken to a field hospital where he received a transfusion from a black serviceman, and his life was saved (or so the story goes).

He never talked much about the War, at least not to me, except to say that they fought it for all Americans, not just for some.

So, Dad, I’m thinking of you today. Different front, same war.

For all the snarking we do here at MPS, there are a few topics that are forbidden: sexual violence is at the top of the list, regardless of the intended victim’s gender, orientation, or whatever. This news story was sent to me by MPS’ Poet Laureate, Mountjoy. Normally Mounty sends me funny things, his notorious Haiku work; sometimes we get into long, thoughtful email threads about serious subjects. The article, which I am publishing whole, is from Agence-France Press. Mounty sent it to me with the simple title “WTF”:

Rape game rewards sexual violence

A Japanese computer game maker has dismissed a protest by US rights campaigners against the game “RapeLay”, which lets players simulate sexual violence against females.

New York-based Equality Now launched a campaign this week “against rape simulator games and the normalisation of sexual violence in Japan”.

It urged activists to write in protest to the maker and Prime Minister Taro Aso, arguing the game breaches Japan’s obligations under the 1985 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

The Yokohama-based games manufacturer Illusion brushed off the campaign.

“We are simply bewildered by the move,” said spokesman Makoto Nakaoka. “We make the games for the domestic market and abide by laws here. We cannot possibly comment on (the campaign) because we don’t sell them overseas.”

Players earn points for acts of sexual violence, including stalking girls on commuter trains, raping virgins and their mothers, and forcing females to get abortions, according to the group’s online statement.

Japan, often criticised as a major producer of child pornography, in 1999 banned the production, distribution and commercial use of sexually arousing photos, videos and other materials involving those aged under 18.

However, the law did not criminalise possession of such materials, and the ban also failed to cover child porn in animation and computer graphics, often categorised as “hentai” (pervert).

US online retail giant Amazon in February took RapeLay off its websites after receiving complaints but clips of the game were still available this week on popular video sharing websites.

A Japan Committee for UNICEF spokeswoman said the Japanese loophole hindered international efforts to crack down on child porn.

“In this globalised world, connected via the internet, even one loophole could jeopardise all the regulations,” she said. “The world trend is to try to ban even the accessing and looking at websites of virtual images.”

A spokeswoman for the Japanese government’s gender equality bureau said the office “realises the problem is there”.

“While we recognise that some sort of measures need to be taken, the office is currently studying what can be done,” she said.

Notorious race-baiter and known brown shirter, Michelle Malkkkin needs to go onto a watch list: she may be a threat to herself and to others.

It’s been a bad week for the poor-man’s Coulter. First the Department of Homeland Security (DHS, not to be confused with package delivery service DHL) issued a document requested by the previous GOP administration that essentially said that Malkkkin’s entire audience are potential domestic terrorists, and then the sex-phobic (and clearly unsatisfied) Malkkkin learns that she has been promoting an unsavory (or perhaps overly savory?) sex practice as a tax protest, and then the protest fizzles in the drizzle. What’s a hater to do?

Well, if you are Malkkkin, you do what you always do: you open up your detachable jaw, swallow a rat, and then you belch a pronouncement:

Department of Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano has turned her attention away from acts of Islamic jihad on American soil (which she now refers to as “man-caused disasters”). Instead, her department is sounding the alarm over an unquantified “resurgence” in “right-wing extremism activity.”

Not to nitpick, Malkkkin, but the only successful act of Islamic jihad on American soil in the past ten years happened under your boy, Chimpy McStagger, who chose to ignore the PDB entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack US.” But under Chimpy’s never-watchful eye, we have also had acts of domestic terrorism too numerous to count – we can start with the As — abortion clinic attacks and work our way to anthrax attacks and on, and up the alphabet. But I think even you get my drift, Malkkkin.

There is a reason why DHS is worried about domestic terrorism, and a reason why DHS is worried about right-wing domestic terrorism: there is a long standing history of right wing domestic terrorists. And as HR managers everywhere will tell you, past performance is the best indicator of future performance.

The report says:

“Right-wing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

Now, most sane people would read that and understand that the document is describing, in abstract terms a group of people that are indeed anti-government. Malkkkin, always a narcissist, reads it and thinks that it is addressed to her and to her mouth breathers:

You cannot ignore the context or the timing of this DHS report. It’s no small coincidence that Napolitano’s agency disseminated the assessment just a week before the nationwide April 15 Tax Day Tea Party protests… These attempts to demonize the Tea Party movement come on the heels of widespread conservative-bashing over the recent shooting sprees in Pittsburgh and Binghamton, N.Y. Taking Hillary Clinton’s advice to “never waste a good crisis,” left-wing pundits and analysts have blamed the tragedies on everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Fox News to the NRA.

And as always, the small minded and non-critically thinking Malkkkin confuses cause with effect. The effect of the NRA, Rush, and all the -phobias added to a toxic stew of economic disaster results in actual violence. But of course she would confuse cause with effect: after all, she did cause a group of UC Santa Cruz students to be stalked with death threats by her mouth breathers when she published their contact information on the web and told her winged monkeys to go get them. Cause requires intention and an actor. An effect is a by-product; the butterfly effect.

To not see a connection between her actions and the actions of the others in her little Heathers-like circle of bullying and hatred and the violence she engenders is unintelligent, and unintelligence, thy name is Malkkkin.

When last we left our intrepid heroine, Nurse Nora, she was vying to become the Fangoria Spooksmodel against some rather, um, stiff competition.

But thanks to the trusty help of the Scissorheads we were able to raise the dead elevate Nora into the finalist round!

You may recall that Nora is the daughter of our good friend Bubs from the Sprawling, Ramshackle Compound. She’s a good kid, from a fine family.

But now we must vote, and vote quickly! Time is against us!

Click this link to go to the Fangoria website’s contest page, scroll down to find Nora, select the radio button and click “vote.”

The Fangoria people will ask you for your email address and send you a note to verify your vote. This time around, Fangoria allows only one vote per email address, and might disqualify contestants with “suspicious” voting activity.

And remember, she might be a murderess, but she gives good head.

“The Way It Is” by Anthony Discenza — San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art

Yesterday, when I was out walking in downtown SJ, I ran across this poster (see the art above), and I was stunned. It was behind glass in one of the kiosks we have in the nightclub district (affectionately known as SOFA – South of First Street Area). I was even more stunned to learn it is the promotion for an art installation at the San José Institute of Contemporary Arts, of which I have been a long time supporter and member. It was the first I heard of this show.

But I digress.

It is a stunning reminder of the amount of rejection that so many of us receive in our lives; not just during these difficult time of the Great Recession, either. Recently one of the colleges in San Diego made a horrible mistake and invited 29,000 rejected students to come to the campus orientation and they have had to retract all of those invites. There are whole Facebook groups set up to share the rather cold and cruel rejection letters (oddly, mostly sent as email or ¡gasp! as text messages to their phones) that applicants are getting from colleges and universities.

I have a very good friend (and contemporary) who has been looking for work for more than a year, and she is now working as a temp doing basic data entry; she is a gifted writer, excellent grammarian from an excellent private university, and has an advanced degree. She had the dubious honor of training her (outsourced) replacement at her last company, which had to hurt. She tells me that in her job search, she rarely gets a rejection letter, she usually hears absolutely nothing after she receives the automated reply that her application was received.

So, I’m curious: Scissorheads, do any of you have a tale of institutional rejection that you would like to share in the comments?

…for Binghamton

I don’t need to go over the details of the news – you already know it and probably better than I do.

I know it is like spitting into the wind, but I will say it again: we’ve got to get rid of guns, bullets, rifles, whatever. We are killing ourselves in record numbers in all parts of the country. It is insane that we are so armed and dangerous, and no one can convince me that Saturday Night Specials and assault rifles are designed to do anything except kill people. And don’t tell me about subsistence hunting or hunting as a sport. How can an automatic weapon ever be considered a sport against Bambi? Until Bambi gets guns and starts shooting back, it is not sport, it is slaughter.

AP

When last we saw our hero, Butterball McCain was speaking out on the GOP.

It seems that when you attack Mann Coulter from inside the GOP big tent, it means open season. An there is nothing like watching the rage of the GOP sisterhood in full flower as the elder harpies of the right, snarling on a botox and vodka binge, go full tilt boogie after a rising, pretty and youthful star…

Laura Ingraham mocked Butterball’s weight and called her “just another valley girl gone awry” on her radio show.

Ok, I was really hoping that I was going to get that role in the Real World, but then I realized that, well, they don’t like plus-sized models. They only like the women who look a certain way. And on this 50th anniversary of Barbie, I really have something to say.

– Laura Ingraham, pretending to be McCain in a faux valley girl voice

Listen for yourselves:

But wait! There’s more!

Michelle Malkkkin chose to criticize the 24-year-old for her lack of “fixed ideological principles.” The lesson here, you see, is that when anyone criticizes Coulter, that person also criticizes her down-market doppleganger, Malkkkin. Hell hath no fury like a Malkkkin with a deadline to fill.

You know what’s wrong with Meghan McCain? It’s not her weight. It’s not her voice. It’s not her looks. She’s a beautiful young girl with TV-friendly poise and natural charm. The trouble with Meghan McCain is that, like her father, she has no fixed ideological principles — conservative, liberal, or otherwise. She seems to have inherited the notion that playing the ‘maaaaverick’ imparts her with moral authority and credibility as a fresh voice for the GOP.

– Michelle Malkkkin

But this is why I like Butterball: she doesn’t take crap from these relics. So she wrote a response on her blog and at the Daily Beast that probably really caused some true harm to her tormentors:

I have been teased about my weight and body figure since I was in middle school, and I decided a very long time ago to embrace what God gave me and live my life positively, attempting to set an example for other girls who may suffer from body image issues. The question remains: Why, after all this time and all the progress feminists have made, is weight still such an issue? And in Laura’s case, why in the world would a woman raise it? Today, taking shots at a woman’s weight has become one of the last frontiers in socially accepted prejudice.”

So, for all the good that Butterball was trying to do to bring younger people into the GOP, and young women at that, the GOP has shown exactly how welcome they would be.

(FYI, I know I’m going to get some crap for this, but I chose Butterball as her nickname because Meghan is very cute and has some serious curves; she’s not an emaciated twig like her mother. Butterball was also the name of a kitten I had as a toddler that was cute and indeed a bit zaftig.)

Reuters

So, let’s recap shall we?

AIG maintains that it must pay bonuses to certain executives who admittedly are the ones that drove the company into the ground. CEO Edward Liddy says that it is a contractual obligation and that his hands are tied.

Poor baby intends now to spend more than a billion of our taxpayer dollars handing out bonuses, or “he will lose the executive talent.”

Let it rip.

Lose the talent.

Where else will these crooks find jobs? It is an empty threat, at best.

So what is Little Timmy doing about this, well, blackmail? Any contract, anywhere, is subject to litigation, and given the extraordinary circumstances here, with massive fraud, a world-wide economic meltdown, and now colossal sums of taxpayer money going to bail out this allegedly capitalist market, litigation is truly called for. Let AIG go to a jury of US citizens and see what happens…

But all that aside, why isn’t someone, somewhere looking into criminal prosecutions against these executives? This whole debacle seems clearly like fraud on a massive scale. Instead of bonuses, there should be handcuffs.

Geithner is not so much up for confrontation, and the real tragedy here is that like Payout Paulson before him, Little Timmy Geithner is part of the problem. If the Federal Government is too afraid to take on these crooks, then who will?

This situation with AIG (and others) is to Obama as the Iranian hostage crisis was to Carter. Obama needs to act, decisively, immediately, or this whole thing is a PR nightmare and he becomes a one-term president.

UPDATE 1: Here’s a petition from Firedog Lake – Tell Congress — no more money for banks until they tell us where it has all gone. We’ll be delivering your comments personally to members of Congress this Wednesday, when Barney Frank’s Financial Services Committee holds an AIG hearing on Capitol Hill. Or better still, call the White House and yell: 202-456-1111

UPDATE 2: Called the White House and spoke with a very nice person and registered my disgust with the situation and said that the contracts with AIG should be litigated.

…well, himself, actually.

Rush Limbaugh wants America to know that there’s nothing wrong with wanting President Barack Obama to fail. In fact, the conservative talk show host said Saturday, wanting the new U.S. president to fail is “nothing more than common sense.”

“This notion that I want the president to fail, this shows you a sign of the problem we’ve got,” Limbaugh said during a long speech in Washington D.C. at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, which was cosponsored by a long list of organizations including AT&T, Google and The Heritage Foundation.

“Now, I understand we can’t say we want the President to fail, Mr. Limbaugh. That’s like saying — this is the voice of the New Castrati, by the way, guys who have lost their guts. You can’t say Mr. Limbaugh that you want the President to fail because that’s like saying you want the country to fail. It’s the opposite. I want the country to survive. I want the country to succeed. ”

I’m not surprised that AT&T would be co-sponsoring this sort of crap, but the Google?

Anyway, short and sweet and leave ‘em laughing Rush Limbaugh was scheduled for 20 minutes, and he dithered and bleated for 90. And his speech was received with standing ovations. I think it is safe to conclude that Rush is the modern face of the GOP, and he is its heavyweight opinion maker. They are quite literally the dinosaurs thrashing about in the tar.

…Happy Blog-O-Versary to Watertiger!

If Elvira can be the Mistress of the Dark, then Watertiger is the Mistress of the Snark. Watertiger is one of the great pals of Mock, Paper, Scissors, and she now and again lets me play in her sandbox at Dependable Renegade.

Please click the link above and give Watertiger your best wishes. Tell her that ol’ ‘Grain sent ya!

Wikimedia

This Thursday, celebrations are under way worldwide to mark Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. From Argentina to Australia, people are gathering for film screenings, quiz contests, and museum exhibits on “Darwin Day” – along with at least one “survival of the fittest” cake-eating contest.

I’m trying to remember the play in which Evolution is mentioned, the grand lady of the manor says something like, “I don’t care if we are descended from apes, I just don’t want the servants to think about it.” I think it might be Shaw, but I’m not sure.

Anyway, the Wingnuts are sure to be in fine form today.

Scissorheads –

Our friends down under continue to report in, Stringer commented sometime last night, so we know she and Mountjoy (who else) are OK. Thanks for the prayers.

That said, the devestation continues. Here’s a recent email from Mounty:

Things have subsided – the reason the numbers are going up is that they authorities have the areas sealed off, and are going ruined house to ruined house to locate victims – locate, but not identify. That will take months. The process is slow, and there are many people still missing. It is not likely that anyone who was in an isolated area survived – only those who banded together stood 1/2 a chance – and in many cases, they died together, all the same.

The fire travelled at 60mph. Embers were blowing horizontally up under tiles and into roofs. One man told a story in todays paper of how he stayed to defend his house – within 3 minutes it was ablaze, 2 minutes after that the roof caved in. He took his dog, but had to lock his cat/kittens in a room and listen to them perish as the windows exploded as he fought the blaze. He moved over to his neighbours – within 15 minutes the same thing. Finally they moved into a third refuge in the town. This place burnt down too, but the heat had abated enough they were able to survive…

Right now the immediate danger is over, but there are around 40 fires still burning, and half of those are out of control. The weather has cooled a lot, but tensions are running high.

Ironically, further North in Queensland, communities are being evacuated because of extreme flooding….

And our president got involved (how refreshing is that?):

The President made the call [to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to offer US assistance and prayers for the victims] about 1.10 pm AEST time, within minutes of finishing his first prime-time news conference on the US economic crisis.

Keep thinking good thoughts for our friends in Oz, and say prayers if you got’em.

…for Australia.

Entire towns have been razed by wildfires raging through southeastern Australia, burning people in their homes and cars in the deadliest blaze in the country’s history. The number of dead Monday stood at 108, a grim toll that rose almost by the hour as officials reached further into the fire zone.

Folks, in case anyone was questioning it, there is a process called desertification that is happening in pretty much all the Mediterranean regions of the world, and it is a by-product of global climate change. Last year we saw it in Greece, and it is happening with the drought and wildfires in California. The fires in Oz are another, tragic, example.

I received a note from Mountjoy (who else) who says,

While I am safely ensconced on the opposite side of our dry brown land, there has been devastation on a massive scale from Bushfires here in Australia this past weekend. The death toll is at 108 and sure to rise as more isolated towns are checked for bodies. Whole communities have been destroyed, and thousands of lives affected. You can read about it here http://www.theage.com.au/ .

Those scissorheads who are religiously inclined may wish to say a pray for the victims, and for the families who lost literally everything. I cannot fathom the despair they must be feeling as the sun comes up today.

UPDATE from Mountjoy:

The speed and severity of what happened is frightening. People were trapped as whole country towns got over-run by the inferno, or died in their cars as they tried to outrun the flames, or crashed their cars trying to speed away, only to be incinerated. The images are rightly being compared to those from Hiroshima – apparently the radiant heat from the flames was lethal up to 150 yards away it was that hot, while the flames themselves were being fanned by 60 mph winds, carrying embers ahead of the main fires. One fella says the temperature reached 140F as he fought to save his house.

Once again, the Arabs have the best solution: burn those responsible at the stake, like the witches they are.

OK, Scissorheads

In the interest of full disclosure I need to reveal that I was laid off last week from (Itty-Bitty Machines? I’ve Been Mismanaged?) – there were several thousand of us, and for reasons that I do not clearly understand it was not reported in the media.

To be honest, I saw it coming, and so it was not a shock to me. The only shock of it was that they did this at the same time – literally as they announced great earnings and boasted to the employees that there will be pay raises and bonuses “almost as good as 2007s!” I guess I know how they will manage that…

And as many of you already know, I did not like it much there, frequently referring to it as the place where software goes to die. This may be a blessing in disguise.

I’ve always been a good money manager and so I am not worried about the wolf blowing the Hut down – so don’t you be either. Silicon Valley is only just now being clobbered, so I suspect it may take a while before I re-enter the workforce. In the meanwhile, I am very likely to go volunteer for a non-profit.

Regards,

Tengrain