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I've noticed that when analyzing the major news events of the world, I frequently jump to a very ill-informed, and hasty wrong conclusion. Those wrong conclusions are preserved here forever in my weekly news reflections.

December 05, 2009
 
Obama earns his Peace Prize: Young Prince Hamlet has finally ceased his soliliquizing and made his decision. 30,000 additional U.S. troops will be sent to the rocky, smoldering cracks of entagled, shredded guts and flesh formerly known as Afghanistan. This is somewhat more than Vice President Joe Biden recommended. Some idiot let him open his mouth (aren't there people on the White House staff in charge of keeping it shut?) whereupon he called for only 10,000. The General, Stanley McChrystal, asked for 40,000. Why not 40,000, President Obama? Why not 50 or 60 thousand? Obviously no one knows what good it will do. Remember the 2007 Iraq "surge" everyone said was "working?" What the fuck does that mean? Maybe it did work. I don't know. But I do know that we still expect to be in that backward shithole for the next millenium. That doesn't feel like "working" to me. Don't get me wrong, I want us to win. However, I don't know what that means, neither do our leaders, and neither do you. Sending more troops might settle shit down, like in Iraq, but there's still no way we're ever leaving. We might just be sending more young American men and women upon whom misguided religious bedlamites can explode themselves. In Vietnam, we called this strategy "escalation," a term carefully avoided by the current government. This was, you might have heard, a failure.
Tiger's wood: So Tiger Woods has been doing some fucking. How could he not? He is an international celebrity athlete. It's easy to not cheat on your wife if you're just some average Joe, but if you're famous it's nearly impossible. The problem here is he's a golfer. Golfers are usually really unhip, old, stuffy pricks who no one would want to fuck. Tiger Woods, being relatively attractive, is naturally going to be pursued by a bevy of beautiful young women. If he were a basketball player, this would be no big deal. Remember Wilt Chamberlain? He claimed to have slept with over 20,000 women. It goes without saying that Magic Johnson was a terrible pussy-slayer. Even the ultimate proponents of Godly morality can't help it. Look at the way Pastor Ted Haggard chased dick. Or televangelist Jim Bakker's sex scandal twenty years back. Even Martin Luther King Jr. was smashing the box. Smashing it all across the country. It's part of fame. Frankly, it's a big part of what makes fame so desirable. And while I think his wife should feel free to beat his ass with a nine-iron, I really don't understand why everyone else is so concerned.

November 28, 2009 
 
Black Friday: So, Thanksgiving was this week and yesterday saw the start of the post-holiday frenzy. Will this weekend turn out to be what the economy so sorely needs? Well... we are in what is called a "jobless recovery" or so I keep hearing. The economy has begun tentatively to recover, but not enough to have employers start to hire again. With unemployment this week at 10.2% and still going up, you may be wondering if Americans will be squeamish about holiday spending or if they'll just blow everything they have, consequences be damned. Come on, this is America. Irresponsible spending is our right, and our willingness as both a nation and as individuals to take on crippling debt will not be deterred. Yay!
Obama's Feast: Gobble, gobble. It seems, at last, President Obama will now have to eat his pretty words. In 2003, with the conflict in Iraq becoming ever more inevitable, and with Democrats such as Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and- aw, fuck it, about all of them- lining up to kiss W's ass, then Illinois state-level politician Barack Obama gave a public and impassioned speech against the war in Chicago. During his presidential campaign, Obama needed something to satiate the red-meat crowd. He repeatedly cast Iraq as the "bad war" and Afghanistan as the "good war." I've always suspected that what he was really (but perhaps disingenuously) trying to say was "Hey, don't get me wrong, of course I love war. I love it as much as you do. But let's fight this one instead." And, while we're on the subject, I also suspect that if John Kerry had won in 2004, if George W. Bush somehow had a third term, or if John McCain had won last year, we'd basically be stuck in the same quagmire. Now the generals want more troops. They always do. Obama now has to decide whether or not to escalate the conflict in Afghanistan. We're still waiting.
Sarah Palin is a fucking idiot: Of course, so are her followers. This past week has been a nonstop drumbeat of backlash against the previous Newsweek cover which depicted her in running clothes. Apparently, this undercuts the seriousness of the woman as a politician. That's funny. How the fuck do you think her whole marketing apparatus is set up? This is her whole schtick, all that hockey mom, Joe Sixpack bullshit. Duh. How should a reputable news source portray her? Should they have her sitting in an office, wearing a nice pantsuit, newspapers strewn all about like Lyndon Johnson, poring over documents of supreme political importance? Bitch, please. So now she's reemerged to sell her book and has started to give interviews again. Hilarious. I honestly expected, in the time she's been out of the limelight, that she would have had her people get her more versed in history, politics, government, geography, and world events in preparation for her political future. She has done no such thing. She's intellectually lazy and willfully stupid. Just remember, nearly half of all voters thought she should be Vice President of the United States. Jesus.
Healthcare: This is the other war. It's truly been amazing to see the way conservatives have marched lock-step through this process, as if it's this great liberal hijacking of American values. The bill itself, or any of the ideas expressed in public by legislators about it is anything but. No one dares suggest that the government simply provide coverage to all of its citizens. Some countries (like every modern nation but us) do this to some degree. When someone does float this idea, even liberals treat them like fucking Mao. The fact is, with unemployment at 10.2%, allowing insurance to be something which is tied to the individual's employer is fucking nuts. The bill, particularly if it's neutered of it's bullshit "public option," more or less allows this to continue. What about the populist idiocy, then? Death panels? Socialism? Fuck you. Have these healthcare blockers ever heard of Medicare? Socialism might be a term they would use for it (but old people vote). How about the military, they have free government provided healthcare? Again, you could call this "socialism." But you don't. I don't like this bill myself, but I don't understand what is so Stalinist about it. I give up.
Heinous gayness: So the latest bland, manufactured pop confection kissed some dude at an awards show. Who the fuck cares? Seemingly everyone. Adam Lambert was bumped from a slot on Good Morning America (in favor of Chris Brown- don't get me started on that one) apparently because of this. He also had some dancer's face in his crotch during his performance at this year's American Music Awards this week. It is incredibly obvious that his homoness is the problem for his detractors. The content of his performance itself was more or less standard stuff. Almost any Madonna awards show performance is more sexual. Ditto Janet Jackson, who went junk grabbing in her performance of the same evening. Critics (religious types, dipshits, busybodies, pussies, etc.) repeated their favorite chorus: "Oh, the children!" If you are keeping your kids up until ten o'clock to watch some awards show, your kids are in trouble anyhow. Besides, I remember watching music videos when I was growing up in which women pranced on the beach with just enough fabric to cover their nipples and assholes. And this was on when I came home from school. What these morons are really concerned about is the classic fear of homo conversion. That is, the idea that children in a society which allows homosexuality to be seen as normal will become gay themselves. Right. Firstly, who cares? Secondly, this is not how things work. As a flaming heterosexual, I can tell you, I don't need society to tell me I want pussy. I just knew. So fuck off, all you backward hicks. If you need to hate Adam Lambert, do it because his music sucks, not because his mouth does.