last post EVER (for 2008)

ok, so this jackass named chip saltsman from tennessee is running for the job of republican national committee chairman, which would basically make him in charge of the entire republican party and the spokesman for the entire party. so guess what? he is a complete racist. he distributed cds that he burned to every member of the republican national committee full of songs that he illegally pirated, including a racist one called “barack the magic negro” that is supposed to be funny. but actually it isn’t funny at all, even if you are a racist or a fan of racial humor, because the humor is just retarded. it isn’t the kind of racial humor you get from someone like dave chappelle, carlos mencia, or david alan grier, because that stuff is actually funny. then again, those guys all have (or in dave chappelle’s case had) plenty of talented comedy central comedy writers working on their shows, and the guy who wrote this song didn’t. this song, “barack the magic negro”, was popularized by rush limbaugh on his radio show (just one of many examples of rush limbaugh’s racism), and we all know rush limbaugh is very influential among the conservative base of the republican party and among republicans in the house of representatives. rush limbaugh claims not to be influential nowadays, but that is just because the republicans lost the elections and are very unpopular now, and he wants to avoid any of the blame for their crushing defeats in the 2006 and 2008 elections. we see his real influence when a top contender for leader of the republican party gets his music off rush’s show, and rush limbaugh was also the guy who kept promoting sarah palin as his favorite pick for vice presidential nominee, before john mccain chose her. rush limbaugh basically brought us sarah palin. he is also the guy who got president bush to withdraw the nomination of harriet miers to the supreme court. rush limbaugh got the house republicans to oppose the banking industry bailout the first time around, and he helped build pressure from the conservative base on senate republicans that led to them blocking the auto industry bailout (resulting in president bush giving the auto industry a bailout using money from the other bailout). he got the comprehensive immigration reform bill that was backed by john mccain, george w. bush, ted kennedy, and most other politicians in washington, d.c. to be defeated in the house, through his tirades against it on the radio. you see, the other conservative talk radio show hosts all take their cue from rush limbaugh, and they all read the same talking points, and they have millions of brainwashed followers willing to do whatever they say. he also coordinates with fox news, basically by having people at fox news listen to his show for talking points and by having his staff watch fox news for talking points. plenty of conservative websites like the drudge report, conservative blogs, conservative news sites, and conservative forum sites then spread the message on the internet. anyway, that successful model is what liberals/progressives have been trying to copy with our blogs, with air america radio, and with our gradual success in taking over msnbc, except most of us on the left have realized radio is a lost cause and have focused on taking over “teh internets”.

back to the original topic... this song does not even have an original tune, and is to the tune of “puff the magic dragon”. i would link to it on youtube, but the original music video of it was taken down (presumably for being offensive or something). well ok, here is another music video of it, but it starts out with obama talking so it isn’t just the song. since that is also on youtube, i expect it will also be taken down soon since youtube loves taking stuff down and censoring everything. well ok, so we could confine the problem to just chip saltsman, rush limbaugh, and the guy who made the song, paul shankman, as well as rush’s millions of listeners, and say that it is just an isolated incident and does not involve republicans as a whole. not so fast. politico.com reports that this controversy will probably HELP chip saltsman win the title of republican national committee chairman. that’s right: being a racist actually helps you become the leader of the republican party. instead of distancing themselves from chip saltsman and condemning him for distributing this song (and doing likewise to rush limbaugh and paul shanklin), republicans are all defending him and saying it is wrong to condemn him. oh really? the last time i checked, barack obama, a black man, actually won the election, and we americans were busily patting ourselves on the back over how racism had finally been completely destroyed, never to resurface again, with the help of a news media and politicians repeating that “post-racial” message. and now this comes up, proving that racism still does exist after all!

in related news about racism, gov. rod blagojevich of illinois has appointed roland burris to the u.s. senate, based on the fact that roland burris is black. roland burris is one of those people who runs for office again and again and keeps losing again and again, not the kind of guy who can actually win elections. sure, he managed to win 2 elections like back in the 70s and 80s, but who cares? he has been out of politics (at least the winning side of politics) for decades. former black panther and current congressman bobby rush said that we shouldn’t “hang or lynch” roland burris at a press conference held by gov. rod blagojevich, roland burris, and congressman bobby rush. bobby rush also said “my prayers have been answered ... that the governor would appoint an african-american to complete the term of president obama.” both rod blagojevich and bobby rush repeatedly emphasized that roland burris is black and therefore he should be the senator from illinois, and they made the argument that if you don’t let the only black man in the senate serve as a senator because of who appointed him, you are a racist who hates black people. so what is the problem here? a BIG one. rod blagojevich is the racist here, cynically thinking that if he names a black person to the senate, it is somehow legitimate, given that rod blagojevich has been indicted on federal corruption charges and is probably going to be impeached and removed from office soon. gov. blago thinks that if he names someone black, he can use the race card to make sure his pick gets seated in the senate. every single democratic senator currently in the senate has already come out against letting rod blagojevich appoint someone to the senate, and so has former senator and current president-elect barack obama. if anyone chooses the next senator from illinois, it should be either barack obama or the voters of illinois, not some corrupt crook like blago. this cynical maneuver of choosing a black man so that the appointment isn’t blocked is the most ridiculous use of the race card i have seen in some time, and it has no chance of working, given that barack obama has already condemned blago for appointing his replacement after trying to auction his senate seat off to the highest bidder. anyone dumb enough to appear at a press conference alongside rod blagojevich is committing political suicide, so i do not think roland burris will end up in the senate, although bobby rush can probably do anything and still get re-elected, since he is in such a safe district. anyway, my point is, yes, the republicans are a bunch of racist assholes, but not all racist assholes are in that party, and we have some too, like rod blagojevich. technically though, rod blagojevich might not exactly be racist, he might just be cynically trying to exploit the racism he perceives in others for his own political gain. but that is kind of the same thing anyway. just imagine if this appointment goes through, then in 2010 when roland burris is up for re-election to the united states senate, everyone will know that rod blagojevich (who by then will probably be a convicted felon in jail) was the guy who put him there. then roland burris will lose re-election (just like he has lost almost every election he has been in) and obama’s senate seat will fall into republican hands. that is what happens if we let blago pick the next senator and play the race card like this... we lose that senate seat to the republicans in 2 years. why do you think every single democratic senator came out against letting blago do that? i mean, duh! anyway, rod blagojevich must be stopped from being allowed to name roland burris (or anyone else) to the u.s. senate. he needs to be impeached and removed from office a.s.a.p. now i am not going to impugn roland burris’s honor or integrity at all; i am just saying this is not the kind of guy who knows how to win elections, and with blago’s kiss of death, his political career is over. here in new york state, governor david paterson is focused on appointing a successor to hillary clinton in the senate who can actually win elections. we have yet to find out if caroline kennedy is the one for the job, but her chances seem to have been waning a bit in recent days. caroline kennedy is still the top candidate, though. there aren’t many other potential senators who have statewide name recognition and can win elections, besides andrew cuomo. but andrew cuomo already has a job as state attorney general and he is still somewhat new there, so appointing him would cause problems by creating another vacancy to fill. plus we have more of that identity politics bullshit and people wanting a female senator to replace hillary clinton, the same identity politics bullshit that rod blagojevich is trying to exploit in illinois.

right now i am in florida on vacation, and i am glad to say i know very little about the politics of this state. the governor here might not be christ but he is crist, and i am pretty sure the republicans strongly control the entire state legislature here, plus i am in one of the most republican parts of the state, the place katherine harris was a congresswoman from, namely sarasota. florida is somewhat strange, a land of contradictions, a tropical paradise that elected and re-elected jeb bush as governor, the state with the most lightning, home to disney world and miami, a state that is completely flat and barely above sea level where the biggest industry is tourism. sarasota is mostly home to wealthy old people. further south than the rest of the states of the south, florida isn’t even one of them at all, as a former spanish colony conquered by then-general andrew jackson in violation of direct orders from the president at the time not to invade florida. people in florida generally do not have southern accents and the state does not really have the same southern culture as the actual states of the “south”. florida was not a major slave state, and has a whole lot of hispanics (mostly cubans in the miami area). so i would say the biggest contradiction about florida is that despite being the most southeastern state of all, it is not a part of the traditional south, but more like the bahamas or bermuda or hawaii or some other tropical paradise. most of the people in florida aren’t even from here, but, like me, are from places like new york state. however, i am actually going back to new york state soon, back where i have a job and the weather is horrible. i am really enjoying all the time relaxing here in florida and the great weather that is not even remotely wintery, and my trusted companion fluffems the dog is having the time of his life running around the backyard trying to catch all the lizards. anyway, this is the last blog post of mine EVER (for 2008). NEVER AGAIN will i ever publish a blog post in the year 2008. so do not worry about having to read thousands of blog posts in the next less-than-6-hours of 2008. of course, blogger/blogspot probably is in some wacko time zone like pacific instead of eastern, so it will likely show some weird time that makes no sense except to people on the west coast as the time i post this. perhaps the united states should follow the example of communist china and only have 1 time zone for the entire country, so that all clocks nationwide are synchronized. or even better, we could have one universal time coordinated for the entire planet, and call it UTC. and we could have things called “leap seconds” that we would add on at the end of the year so that everyone’s clocks would suddenly be one second off once 2009 starts. oh wait... i am receiving word that this proposal of mine has already been implemented. enjoy your leap second, everyone! it may be your last (if they decide afterwards to stop having leap seconds because they are a silly idea)! anyway, my parents are having me look at some things called “planets” in this thing called the “sky” now. i think the planets they are looking at are called “mars” and “venus”. that makes me wonder... WHERE IS EARTH?!? yes i know, earth is the planet you see if you look down, but how do we know aliens didn’t switch earth with some other planet last night when we were asleep? it would explain a lot of things, like why i am yawning right now, since my yawning most likely indicates my sleep was disturbed last night, and the simplest possible explanation would be earth being switched with another planet, according to occam’s razor, so therefore it must be true. with that in mind, it seems most likely that we are now on mars, and the planets in the sky that my parents want me to look at with them are really earth and venus. i wonder how the earth rovers spirit and opportunity are doing at exploring the barren wasteland that is earth. oh... i just yawned again... more proof of some kind of alien conspiracy... or maybe i am a part of the conspiracy but i forgot because of... i forget why i forgot, but i just yawned another time and feel quite tired now. it is strange how the sky is completely dark now, and it is not even 6:30 pm yet. anyway, it is time to put an end to this monstrous blog post once and for all. i yield myself such time as i may consume. i move that the blogosphere recess until 2009. all those in favor of the motion please rise. a sufficient number having arisen, the motion is adopted. i yield back the balance of my time. by order of the chair, the blogosphere is now in recess until 2009. *sound of gavel hitting against podium very loudly*

why i haven't been blogging much lately

since barack obama was elected, there has been a lot of debate among progressives about whether he is a sellout who isn’t really a progressive at all but a centrist like hillary clinton and many of the other people he has surrounded himself with since the election. some contend that he is a true progressive who is going to use these people to gain more credibility with the centrists and even some conservatives, and then use that to push through a truly progressive agenda. others say that now he is showing his true colors. a few of his choices have been genuine progressives (like his choice for secretary of labor) and his defense and transportation secretaries are actual republicans. the latest move by barack obama that has people more upset than ever is his choice of anti-gay crusader rick warren to give the opening prayer at his inauguration, which seems kind of odd for someone like barack obama to do, given that obama is supposedly a staunch supporter of gay rights. besides this obama-is-a-sellout stuff, there has been the scandal over the governor of illinois, rod blagojevich, and all sorts of people trying to connect that scandal to barack obama and other people on obama’s team like rahm emmanuel. i think all of this effort to tie barack obama into the scandal of that insane idiot rod blagojevich is pretty much bullshit, but i also think that since so many of the people in team obama are from chicago and illinois politics, there is bound to be at least one person among the bunch who is close to gov. blagojevich. i mean it would be ridiculous to expect every single person among the thousands working for obama to be completely ethical and not have any problems, but hopefully nobody important or high-ranking in the obama organization is involved in the blagojevich mess. right-wingers keep claiming rahm emmanuel is guilty of something regarding rod blagojevich, since their initial attempts at directly attacking barack obama on this have failed. since i do not actually know who is involved in this scandal, since i have absolutely nothing to do with it, i really do not know who is guilty and who is not, but it seems to me like people are going around jumping to conclusions. as for the obama-is-a-sellout thing, i really have not made up my mind on what i think about this. as a staunch progressive who cares about the issues, i really hope obama is one of us progressives, and i do have some amount of loyalty to him, having voted for him twice (once in the democratic primary and once in the general election). i am kind of taking a wait-and-see approach to see if barack obama really is a progressive or not, and i do not want to jump to any conclusions or take sides in this debate. the next time barack obama’s name will be on the ballot is in 4 years (assuming he runs for re-election), so there is plenty of time for me to watch him closely and make a determination as to whether i should continue to support him the next time around. for now, i still consider myself an obama supporter, and still have an obama bumper sticker on my car. i never considered him the “messiah” (something the right-wingers made up as a straw-man argument against obama), and i certainly don’t think he could magically solve all of our problems and give everyone a free pet unicorn (outdoing those who would give everyone a free pony). anyway, there is little point to blogging about how i am not sure about things and don’t exactly know what to think anymore. i am certainly glad the obama-biden ticket beat the mccain-palin ticket, since the mccain-palin team would have continued the policies of george w. bush and probably been even more incompetent. and i am still staunchly opposed to the republicans and everything they stand for. but as for barack obama, i still don’t know exactly what part of the democratic party he belongs to. i was hopeful when i heard the right-wingers call him the most liberal member of the senate and accuse him of being a socialist. but unfortunately, it seems he is probably not as left-wing as i had hoped. in a country that has been brought to ruin by right-wing policies, ruining our economy through deregulation and endless tax cuts while wasting innocent lives and hundreds of billions of dollars on an unjustified and poorly executed war, where the government has epically failed responding to disasters like hurricane katrina through the idiocy of unqualified political hacks in charge of important government agencies, we need a radical change in how government is run. we need a government that is actually run by competent people who know what the hell they are doing, and who will actually make things better instead of worse. and i, for one, think that progressives are the ones with the right ideas to fix everything, and if obama governs as a centrist, halfway between progressives and conservatives, i doubt it would be anywhere near as successful as an actual progressive government. the administration of george w. bush and the 12-year-long control of congress by republicans (between the 1994 election and the 2006 election) both proved that conservative ideas do not work in practice and that conservatives are morally bankrupt. they think that hating people who are different from them demonstrates their moral righteousness. just consider all their hatred towards homosexuals, illegal immigrants, liberals, atheists, muslims, french people, mexicans, the chinese, the people of india, and pretty much the rest of humanity other than people exactly like them. note that i left black people, hispanics, asians, native americans, and other racial minorities off the list of people conservatives hate, and i also left off women; i am being charitable by not accusing them of racism and sexism, which i could easily have done, since there is a lot less overt racism and sexism than hatred towards the groups of people i actually did mention. i also left off hatred of jews... hating jews is very politically incorrect in the united states and nobody in politics does it anymore, at least not openly, so there is little evidence of it other than from right-wing fundamentalist preachers. anyway, there is no way in hell i am voting for any republican for any office at all for quite some time, unless the republicans completely shape up. i only once voted for a republican who was not running unopposed, and that was for the new york state comptroller in 2006 because i thought alan hevesi was a crook; that same year i voted for eliot spitzer for governor, hillary clinton for senator, michael arcuri for congress, and everyone else i voted for that year was a democrat too except for the state comptroller. there have been a few times i actually voted for green party candidates, actually. when h. carl mccall was running for governor against george pataki, i voted for the green party candidate for governor... that is the only time i voted for a green party candidate when there was also a democrat running for the same office. that was the 2002 election, and it was at a time i was completely disgusted with the democratic party for being a bunch of inept nitwits who went along with whatever president bush said instead of acting like a real opposition party. howard dean’s presidential campaign is what brought me back to the democratic party, since out of all the 2004 presidential candidates, only howard dean, dennis kucinich, and al sharpton were willing to vocally criticize president george w. bush and the war in iraq, and the rest of the candidates were a bunch of centrist losers. i did vote for john kerry (as the lesser of 2 evils basically), but he lost because he was a centrist loser who had failed to staunchly oppose president bush and the war in iraq consistently. the 2004 election is when i became involved volunteering for the broome county democratic party, since i thought it was so important that george w. bush be defeated that i had to become involved. but i have always been somewhat to the left of the democratic party in general, and i am basically someone with the politics of dennis kucinich, who was my initial choice for the 2008 presidential election. i actually voted for kucinich in the 2004 democratic primary since howard dean was already out of the race, and the “dean scream” had made me embarrassed for howard dean, plus my politics were always closer to kucinich than dean; i just had been a howard dean supporter because i thought howard dean was a hell of a lot more electable than dennis kucinich. anyway, this time around, i switched from kucinich to obama in early january, but i am still someone much to the left of obama, a staunch progressive who wants real change and not just people with d’s after their names instead of r’s who are indeed quite a bit different from the r’s but not anywhere near as much as i would want. and barack obama is definitely to the left of hillary clinton, which he proved time and time again throughout the debates and the primaries and caucuses when they were campaigning against each other. i am definitely glad hillary clinton is not the president-elect, since the clintons are pretty much just bush lite. certainly she would be better than john mccain, and all those wacky republicans like mitt romney and mike huckabee would be even worse than john mccain. the only republican candidate who was better than john mccain was ron paul, although i do disagree with him on many issues. ron paul agrees with me on many issues that no mainstream politician like barack obama would ever agree with me on. we both agree on legalizing victimless crimes, which would help downsize the prison-industrial complex. but ron paul has economic views and views on the size of government that i am diametrically opposed to; he wants to deregulate everything, have completely free-market economics, and eliminate the vast majority of government programs, including social security. personally, i don’t like social security either, because it is paid for by a regressive tax and people who had higher incomes when they worked collect higher benefits than people who had lower incomes. social security is far too regressive and needs to be replaced with a progressive system, one that gives more money to the poor and less to the rich, one that taxes the rich more and the poor less. the gap between the rich and poor has been steadily increasing for decades in our country because of right-wing economic policies, and the middle class is being destroyed and most people are gradually becoming poor (not necessarily beggars on the street or homeless, but rather not making much money, or unemployed). until recently, the lack of money by a large portion of our population and the negative savings rate was not hurting the economy too much because those people easily got credit and could borrow lots of money to buy things they could not afford. but now, the credit markets have collapsed and there is less money to go around (money put in banks gets lent out and this has a multiplier effect on the money supply, so the actual amount of money in the economy greatly exceeds the amount of money that physically exists as paper currency or coins, but the recent banking and lending collapse has led to a sharp decline in this multiplier of the money supply). ultimately, the problem was that americans spent more money than they had, because real incomes adjusted for inflation have been decreasing for the average person since the start of the george w. bush administration, while things like college, gasoline, and houses had their prices skyrocket. now gasoline and houses have gotten cheaper than they were a few months or a year ago, but college is more expensive than ever. without good education, people will not be able to make much money unless they become very skilled in particular trades. with the collapse of the auto industry and domestic manufacturing, jobs that do not require education are being lost at an alarming rate at the same time that education is becoming ridiculously unaffordable. we have a lot of problems and barack obama and the enlarged democratic majorities in the house of representatives and the senate need to work together to fix everything, and we need to prevent the republicans from any obstructionism. the republicans have already done their best in the past month to try to destroy our domestic automobile industry, especially with the vote in the u.s. senate on the auto bailout bill. this is shamefully unpatriotic of them, since the republicans are now promoting the idea of just having foreign companies make cars, since the foreign companies employ non-union workers and the american companies employ unionized workers. the republicans are being downright evil with regard to their attempts to destroy our domestic auto industry in order to score some cheap political points against the labor union movement. so, while i have somewhat mixed feelings towards barack obama but still support him, i completely oppose all of the republicans in the federal government. the republicans want to make a horrible economic situation much worse; that is now their stated agenda, since they have openly said that they want to destroy our nation’s automobile industry because of their hatred for labor unions. i think we need more labor unions and we need to save our domestic industries from destruction. labor unions bring employees higher wages and better benefits; even republicans acknowledge that fact. that is exactly what our economy needs right now: higher wages and better benefits for the people who do have jobs, so people will have enough money to spend it and keep the economy going. i hope barack obama is on the same page with me, and that the change he brings will actually be in the right direction and go far enough to fix things. but i cannot be sure about anything, or trust any politician completely. i am somewhat of a fan of new york state governor david paterson, but i do not completely trust him either. i am not naive enough to put complete trust in anyone. that would be utterly foolish. i don’t even trust myself. in fact, i probably trust myself less than i trust most other people, because i know firsthand how unreliable i am and how often i fail to come through on things that i want to do or promise to do. and while i do have higher standards for other people than i have for myself, this is mainly because i consider myself to be worthless scum and i have very low self-esteem. i have always been quite thin-skinned when it comes to insults from other people, since my own opinion of myself is much more negative than the opinions of my harshest critics other than myself. but lately i have become more thick-skinned regarding insults, mainly because i think very little of the people insulting me and think that they are even worse scum of the earth than me, and that everything they say is complete bullshit. it is kind of strange how someone like barack obama can bring out the latent positivity in me and actually make me feel good about stuff. my dog fluffems has the same ability to cheer me up. i actually like fluffems better than anyone, including barack obama, although i do know that fluffems is just a stupid dog and is pretty much clueless about everything. that is part of the appeal of a dog like fluffems: the dog is friendly and very loving and kind towards you, showing you a hell of a lot more love and affection than any human ever does, while at the same time being dependent on you, much dumber than you, and generally inferior to you. so you can feel all warm and fuzzy and loved while at the same time feeling superior and like you are better than someone else. and it just makes you want to show that little dog as much love as you can, and keep them safe from danger because the little doggie is too stupid to know how to avoid danger on its own (things like going out in roads full of cars). if another living creature like my dog fluffems shows me some love, i am the most loving person in the world, but this does not happen very often, which is what makes it all the more special when it does happen. i know that some humans like my parents love me, but they do it in this annoying human way that i can’t stand, and it just pisses me off. i don’t like being constantly lectured, bossed around, talked down to like i am a retard despite the fact that i am smarter than 99% of people on standardized tests, and then being expected to feel gratitude for this “display of love”. sure, i have heard of “tough love”; it is what my parents give me every day. i find it quite annoying, and while i am sure they love me a great deal, i wish they would find a better way to show it, one that is more like how the dog shows it. when my dog displays love for me, it is pure unadulterated love and affection, without any criticism, lecturing, or crap like that to piss me off. my dog worships me like a god, which makes sense because dog spelled backwards is god. when i am at my job and my boss tells me to do something, i do it, and i am not annoyed at my boss or anything. my boss has to put up with me being lazy, unreliable, and inefficient, and still likes me and i still make money. and my boss does not go around lecturing me all the time. when my boss tells me i am doing something wrong, it is very short and to the point. with my parents, sometimes when they tell me i am doing something wrong, the argument lasts an hour or two and is very bitter, and i end up quite upset and completely unwilling to cooperate with them because i feel so alienated from them. but if my boss at work tells me to do something, i do it, because my boss is not going to lecture me for hours about what a failure i am at life and how i need to completely change how i do everything, and tell me a huge long list of things to do and expect me to memorize them, all while constantly criticizing and insulting me but claiming it is “love”. look, i love my parents, my sister, my extended family, all of them... but not in the same way i love the dog. the love between a human and a dog is the love between a superior person who is dominant and an inferior beast who is submissive. but the submissive beast that adores its master is, in a way, the better of the two, because the dog’s affection is pure, untainted by a brain capable of thinking or speaking in words. words are the weapons which destroy human relationships and corrupt our society, but animals do not understand words and are still innocent and pure from the malevolent influence of human language. a dog may be able to obey simple commands, but that does not mean the dog can combine words together to understand abstract concepts. every evil dictator came to power using words and ideas (unless they inherited the throne like in monarchy, but monarchy is also based on words and ideas). every evil dictator throughout history has given out commands to kill people and/or do other human rights abuses through words and ideas, communicating with human language. these evils are not found among animals, who only kill when they need food to eat to survive, or if they feel they need to defend themselves from another animal that they think is going to kill them. among the animals, there are no adolf hitlers or josef stalins or pol pots. there are no terrorist animals. there are no animals who start pre-emptive wars based on lies and then mismanage them. animals do not mismanage the economy or defraud investors or get golden parachutes after making their companies bankrupt. and animals do not have pointless arguments that go on for hours. animals do not use words as weapons to attack your self-esteem. animals cannot lie because they can’t even speak or write in the first place. so i like my dog better than people. can you imagine an animal like my dog voting or even having an opinion on politics or religion or any issue at all? it is ridiculous. animals do not have opinions on stuff like that because none of it makes sense to their simple brains. because they are uncorrupted by all of the propaganda we humans put out, animals are innocent and pure from all of the ideology and spin and biased news coverage. so no matter what your politics are or what your religious beliefs are, you can still find a dog who will love you unconditionally and show you nothing but adoration and affection. in this way, a dog is all things to all people. this is what politicians like barack obama try to achieve, but they can never do it better than a dog. a dog has zero ideas, so it is impossible to disagree with a dog on anything. barack obama is trying to be inclusive and have people from all sides of the political spectrum in his administration, and a lot of people like me are getting somewhat ticked off about that. but if my dog went around being friendly to republicans and jumping up on them and wagging his tail and licking their faces, i would be happy about his behavior, because i know that he is too stupid to understand any of their ideas and he is just a friendly animal who loves everyone. that is why my dog is a role model for me, because i have found that all of my intelligence is oftentimes more of a curse than a blessing. intelligence certainly does not help that much in getting along with other people, because it just helps you think up lots of reasons why you are right and they are wrong, so you can get in an argument with them and you both end up pissed off at each other. the people i get along best with nowadays are attractive female co-workers and my boss, since i am extremely careful not to say anything to those people that might get them even slightly upset with me, and i am very careful to completely avoid anything even remotely close to a conflict with any of them. unfortunately, this means i avoid asking girls out, because i know asking girls out sometimes leads to negative reactions, and i do everything possible to avoid negative reactions from girls i like. with other people, i am not as careful with what i say, and so i end up not getting along with them as well. this problem is worst with my parents, since if you have an argument that is over an hour and this happens on a regular basis, not everything you say is nice, by any means. i do not know how to relate to my parents, since all we ever do is argue, and it is so tiresome. i think it is a bad idea for adults to live with their parents under any circumstances. i have found it to be very bad, since parents cannot avoid being parents and treating their offspring like little kids, even if their offspring are graduates of ivy league universities. yes, i may have asperger’s syndrome and panic disorder, but i have a very high iq and i do not appreciate being treated like some kind of retard who has no clue how to do anything. i know for a fact that i am smarter than 99% of people, because i have taken many standardized tests over the years and almost gotten that result. being treated like i am an idiot pisses me off immensely, especially since i know that the people who are treating me like an idiot are dumber than i am. i only know one person who is smarter than me, this really fat guy i went to college with who has an iq that is probably around 10 points higher than mine. and, like me, he has a few mental health problems and has not been able to find a good job either. so intelligence is not really that great of an asset to have, unless you are actually able to use it to become successful somehow. but i just hate the way i am treated like an idiot, like i am a little kid and not 26 years old, and it is completely disrespectful towards me, so i feel no need to show respect towards those who disrespect me, and that just leads to more long arguments. when i am not at work, i mostly stay in my bedroom to avoid other people, when i am not playing with my dog or watching tv. i have good reason to avoid other people: i can’t stand being around them if they keep disrespecting me. i just want to get the hell away from them and have them leave me alone. my life and my problems are none of their damned business, especially if all they have to offer is criticism and insults. the worst thing is when my parents bother me when i am in my bedroom, because i like to think my bedroom is a safe place where i can avoid other people and not have them bug me with their stupid bullshit. i would really like to live on my own but i am dirt poor. there have been a few times i tried to get a good job, although i have not done it in quite awhile. for quite some time, i have not felt like searching for a new job, because it is so depressing and i hate doing it so much. i do not like being bossed around and told how to live my life by people who think they are better than me, and if they tell me to do something like apply for a better job, i sure as hell don’t want to give them the satisfaction of winning by doing what they told me to do. i cannot afford to live on my own, and my parents sometimes threaten to kick me out, and my response is always, good, i want to leave, i hate living here, but i can’t afford to live on my own. and as for getting a better job, i am just hopeless. i hate applying for jobs, i hate job interviews, i hate waiting for a response from the company and then always either getting a letter of rejection or not getting any response at all. it has happened so many times. the only jobs i have ever gotten are bad ones that i can’t stand that pay next to nothing and do not look good on a résumé. my current job is not entirely bad, though, because there are some nice people at work. i guess one of my problems is i just don’t have any friends i ever hang out with or regularly keep in contact with anymore. and another problem is my constant insomnia and sleep deprivation despite being alone in my bedroom most of the day. i have heard that exercise is good (my parents only tell me to do it all the friggen time) but i absolutely hate exercise, and the weather outside here is practically as cold as an antarctic winter, or at least it seems that way to me, and i hate cold weather even more than exercise. there are many things i can’t stand that i have to put up with on a daily basis, but some (like exercise or applying for jobs or doing my laundry) i can usually avoid, so i do. this is what my parents always argue with me about. but i think if i did more things that i hate and that make me miserable, i would be even more miserable than i am now, and what would be the point of living if instead of pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, i were pursuing pain and avoiding pleasure? i do not think a life of pursuing pain and avoiding pleasure is worth living, so i pursue pleasure and avoid pain, since that is the only way to have any chance at happiness. the last time i tried really hard to get a good job, i ended up in the psychiatric ward of a hospital for being suicidal. i do not want to repeat the same mistakes again. barack obama talks about hope a lot, and it is something i like to hear, because i have not had any hope for years, and despite all my cynicism and pessimism, he has given me some hope. but not hope for my own life, just hope for my country and the world. my own life, for the time being, seems to be a lost cause, so i try to avoid ever thinking about it because it is too depressing, and instead i think about things that make me happy, like fun video games or my wonderful dog or how attractive certain girls are or how the democrats finally won everything this time around. i worked in a laundromat a few years back (summer of 2002 i think)... worst job i ever had, the place was like a sweatshop, i completely hated it, and ever since then i have hated laundry more than ever (although i even hated laundry prior to that job). exercise... it is painful and exhausting and often it has triggered panic attacks because of unpleasant or unusual physical sensations it has made me feel in my body, which make me a hypochondriac thinking i have some weird disease and am going to die. anything that leads to panic attacks is something i try to avoid. asking out girls... i have almost always been rejected and it is very emotionally painful for me, and there was only one time i had sex and it was absolutely horrible since i was not attracted to that specific girl and i completely failed at sex, and then for a week or two i was not even attracted to females anymore because i was so disgusted and ashamed. i had sex 3 years ago i think, in november 2005 if i remember correctly. absolutely horrible. i hope to have sex in the future, but not the worst sex ever. only time i ever had it, it went completely wrong. that is just my luck. honestly, i have good reason to hate all the things i hate. i have reasons for everything. but some of my reasons are just stupid. and i hate people who are big enough assholes to point that out. i hate how, regardless of successes like being high school valedictorian and graduating cornell, pretty much everything else in life has seemed to never ever go my way, and everything always seems to go wrong for me. i know for damn sure barack obama can’t fix any of that shit. well, if he does an awesome job on the economy, maybe that would help me find a job, but it would probably only have a slight impact on me personally, because it would still be almost as hard to find a job, only very very slightly easier. it is a lot easier for me to care about issues affecting this country than to care about how awful everything in my life is going, because at least the united states of america is not a lost cause. maybe if i were not a pessimist i would not be a lost cause. but that is like asking a cat to be a dog, or asking the sun to be the moon. being a pessimist is part of who i am, the absolute core of my horrible identity and why i hate myself. without that, what do i have? i don’t know. being a self-hating pessimist is the only life i have ever known, ever since i was a little kid. how am i supposed to “change” or have “hope”? “yes we can”? no i can’t. sorry. i never bought into those silly slogans, because they just do not resonate with pessimists like me. goddammit i need to sleep. i hate this stupid blog. everything i have ever written for this stupid blog is complete crap. i hate blogs, they are nothing but stupid bullshit nobody cares about. now go away and leave me alone. i am in a mood most foul, as is often the case, only this time, i cannot hide it any longer. sorry, maybe i will write a better blog post next time. i am leaving on a vacation to florida on sunday (and i get to take my dog along)! i am both looking forward to it with hope and dread, because i suck at getting ready for things or packing for trips. i can’t wait for the vacation, but i have to get ready for it, and there is nothing to do in florida, at least not the part i am going to with my parents. and will i be able to get along with them? it is so hard!!! i guess i had fun on the vacation to europe i went on with my parents this summer. you see, my parents are not that bad. i am the bad one. oh well. whatever. my dog will be along to cheer me up. sometimes i wish i were in an insane asylum, but i am told whenever i ask a psychologist or psychiatrist that i am in fact “sane”. quite a disappointment, not what i wanted to hear. like is like that sometimes 100% of the time. if it weren’t for my dog... well, i would probably just spend more time on the internet or playing video games. i have to go to a stupid pointless appointment this afternoon with a guy who is trying to help me find a job when i don’t really want to apply for any or go though any more of those awful job interviews. i don’t like having to see him, or my psychologist, or any other sorts of appointments. i don’t like going to the support group for my asperger’s syndrome. i just want to stay in my room and be by myself and only come out when i need to eat or go to the bathroom. i need to pack for my stupid trip. once i get there i will be bored the whole time. at least i won’t have to go to my job while i am on vacation, and the weather won’t be as cold. but i will have those 2 annoyances to come back to once vacation ends after 3 weeks. dammit, i am so annoyed about everything. i would even say that perhaps i am stressed out, except my anti-anxiety medication seems to be preventing me from stressing out. that is a good thing, because at least i am not a nervous wreck with panic attacks like i was earlier this year. i don’t feel like going to my appointment today, or going to work today, or going to the support group tomorrow. i have to do all my laundry before i can pack my clothes and leave for florida on sunday. writing this blog is boring. i am going to try to sleep now. it will not work, i will just lie in bed awake, and then i will have to go to a stupid pointless appointment, and then my stupid pointless job. and maybe i can have a stupid pointless argument or two in between. yeah, i guess i am stressed out. if only i had more sleep... then i would feel better emotionally. constant insomnia takes its toll on the emotions. i need to pack. go away. i am going to try to sleep now and completely fail and just lie in bed motionless with my eyes closed and not accomplish anything except making myself miserable. this happens all the time. try living a day of my life, see if you like it. fuck.

russia was right after all

this summer we witnessed a war between russia and the tiny former soviet republic of georgia. the u.s. media portrayed this as russian aggression against a small, defenseless country, and proof that russia was still the evil empire that it was back when it was the soviet union. well it turns out russia did not start the war. the man who was georgia’s ambassador to russia until they ended diplomatic relations this summer, erosi kitsmarishvili, has revealed the truth about this affair, something i have been wondering about for months. i did not trust either the russian or the georgian side of the story, and they both seemed like liars, but at first i thought that the georgian side, as told by georgian president mikhail saakashvili, was much more plausible than the russian side of the story.

south ossetia and abkhazia are both regions of georgia populated by ethnic minorities, ossetians and abkhazians rather than georgians. ever since a war in the early 1990s after the soviet union collapsed, a war in which georgia fought against south ossetians and abkhazians, they have been wanting to become independent from georgia so they can unify with russia, because the people there are afraid of georgians and want protection from russia, a country they view as their protector and ally. after that war, russian peacekeeping troops were sent into those 2 breakaway regions to protect the civilian populations from georgian aggression. however, those 2 regions were still officially part of the nation of georgia, although they had their own separate governments and were not under the authority of the georgian government. south ossetia and abkhazia were all ready de facto independent countries ever since that war in the early 90s, and their status as part of the nation of georgia was only a technicality. this is similar to the kurds in northern iraq: they gained independence from the iraqi government of saddam hussein in the early 90s after the united states invaded iraq in the first gulf war to liberate kuwait. the kurds had their own government in northern iraq and saddam hussein had no authority or power there. after the united states invaded iraq again in 2003 and overthrew saddam hussein, the kurds continued to have their own de facto independent nation of kurdistan in northern iraq, and to this day they are still not under the authority of iraq’s central government. kurdistan being part of iraq is just a formal technicality, and the current iraqi central government has no more authority there than saddam hussein did.

anyway, the president of georgia had been wanting for years to reconquer south ossetia and abkhazia, and put them back under the authority of the georgian central government. russia, on the other hand, still had peacekeeping troops there to protect the civilian population. the georgian president, mikhail saakashvili, made one of the worst miscalculations in military history when he decided to invade and conquer the 2 breakaway provinces. russia does not take too kindly to its troops being attacked, and the civilians in both provinces were already strongly pro-russia and anti-georgia. being attacked by the georgian military reinforced the views of the civilians there even more, and the russian military decided that it would not let some puny, insignificant country like georgia get away with killing its peacekeeping troops and conquering people who were under russian protection.

naturally, russia did a bit of overkill with their military response, completely destroying the georgian military and advancing their troops well into georgia proper. advancing their troops into georgia proper, to positions near the georgian capital of tbilisi, was a show of strength meant to demonstrate russia’s complete military superiority, and how russia could easily conquer all of georgia if they really wanted to, but russia decided against such a move. this show of strength was meant to completely demoralize the georgians and make them realize they had absolutely no chance of defeating the russian military or retaking the breakaway provinces of south ossetia and abkhazia.

in the end, the result was a lot of innocent people on both sides being killed, and plenty of atrocities on both sides. but the war was instigated by the georgian president mikhail saakashvili, who is hardly a democratic hero. he is more of an oppressive despot, although he did win office through a democratic election. then again, russian president dimitry medvedev and russian prime minister vladimir putin both were democratically elected as well. naturally, none of these elections was entirely democratic, and both russia and georgia have some problems with freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and clean elections. both countries are full of corruption. neither country is led by people who are heroic or morally good in any sense.

but the georgian president proved himself to be a lousy ally to the united states with his complete failure in the war he started. what’s more, the georgian president is close friends with john mccain and american neoconservatives, and he was counting on them for support. john mccain presumptuously said “we are all georgians now,” claiming to speak for all americans. well it turns out john mccain was dead wrong. morally speaking, georgia is even worse than russia, and from a strategic standpoint, it would be much more valuable for the united states to ally itself with a big, strong, important country like russia than to ally with a tiny, insignificant, powerless country like georgia. russia has nuclear weapons and they are vital in dealing with iran and north korea as well as in combating terrorism and the potential for nuclear weapons to fall into the wrong hands. russia has huge amounts of natural resources, especially the fossil fuels that we are so dependent upon nowadays. russia has lately been showing off its support for cuba and venezuela, and threatening us if we deploy a missile defense shield in eastern europe. i say it is time to end this silly hostility towards russia and help russia modernize and become a prosperous democratic ally to us and to europe. i think we should let russia join the european union and nato. if russia were to join the european union and nato, it would permanently change things and transform russia into a pro-western democracy and a dependable ally for the united states. just look at the relationship between france and germany. for centuries, the french and the germans (who were called prussians before prussia expanded to become germany) were bitter enemies, constantly at war with each other. france and great britain were also staunch enemies for centuries. but starting with world war 1, france and the united kingdom (which was previously great britain) became staunch allies. germany and france were bitter enemies up until the end of world war 2, and then germany was divided and conquered by the victors of world war 2. it has not been until recently that france and germany have come to terms and become allies, but nowadays, those 2 nations are the closest pair of allies in the world, showing that nations really can overcome long-standing differences. in the 1990s, the united states and russia were on very good terms and were allies, and president bill clinton of the united states was best friends with president boris yeltsin of russia. bill clinton and boris yeltsin were like BFFs (best friends forever). it is rather tragic that this budding friendship between the united states and russia came to a close after george w. bush took office. sure, george w. bush got along with vladimir putin at first, but this did not last very long, because the russians realized that the neoconservatives in america wanted complete world domination with the united states as the undisputed sole superpower in the world, and the united states was turning russia’s neighbors (such as georgia and ukraine) against russia. just as the united states has for many years tried to control all the countries in north, south, and central america, russia has always tried to control its neighbors, especially the former soviet republics. if we condemn russian imperialism without acknowledging our own imperialism here in the western hemisphere, that is pure hypocrisy. when russia lends support to our current enemies in the western hemisphere such as cuba and venezuela, they are really just doing the same thing we have been doing to them, except nowhere near as badly. our foreign policy has been to threaten the national security of what is today the 3rd most powerful country in the world, russia, (after the united states and china). the russians react to threats to their national security the exact same way we amerians do. they are no different from us. we should put aside our petty differences and work together. the united states cannot rule the world as a single superpower, but if we combine forces with the other most powerful nations on earth, we will be much more powerful and much better able to deal with whatever problems occur anywhere in the world. we have been doing this with china, and our relations with the chinese are better than ever, despite all the evils of the chinese government and how awfully the chinese government treats its own people. if we can be allies with china, then why on earth can’t we be allies with russia, a country that is much less evil than china? russia, unlike china, is actually a democracy, and their human rights record, while bad, is nowhere near as horrible as china’s. and why can’t we be friends with all the nations of the americas, including current enemies like cuba and venezuela? if we can have diplomatic relations with communist nations like china and vietnam, and if we were able to have diplomatic relations with the soviet union and soviet satellite states back during the cold war, why must we stubbornly remain enemies with cuba and venezuela? it does not make any logical sense. if we really want to rule the western hemisphere, we should put aside our differences with the few nations that refuse our hegemony, and have friendly relations with their leaders, treating them with respect and like equals, not like inferiors who must obey our commands or else. the whole point of things like the war on terror is for all the nations of the world to work together and cooperate towards a common goal, which, in the case of the war on terror, is defeating all the terrorists and eliminating them from the face of this globe. how can we achieve victory in things like the war on terror if we constantly fight with other nations and refuse to cooperate with them, when stuff like the war on terror requires close international cooperation? in the case of russia, we need the russians and the russians need us. the 2 world wars and the cold war showed the foolishness of nations fighting against one another... wars by definition involve the mass slaughter of innocent people, all because of the silly, petty differences of the leaders of the nations of the world. we won both world wars and the cold war, but that is no guarantee that we will win wars we fight in the future. we are not doing terribly well in the war on terror that is going on right now, for instance. the only way to defeat the terrorists is to work together with all the other nations of the world, including nations that we have historically been enemies with. anyone who opposes working together with other nations is basically advocating letting the terrorists win.

just yesterday, india suffered a major terrorist attack. the indian government seems to be rather inept at combating terrorism and at intelligence operations. obviously we need much closer cooperation with india, in order to help them deal with situations like this. this is just one example of a nation we need better cooperation with. india’s neighbor and long-time enemy, pakistan, is also a nation we need much more cooperation with. pakistan is perhaps the world’s biggest breeding ground for terrorism, despite being an ally of the united states, and osama bin laden and the top al qaeda leadership is believed to be hiding out inside pakistan. it is likely that pakistanis were responsible for the terrorist attacks in india. we need to work together with pakistan to eliminate the terrorists in their country. the pakistani government is most likely going to be cooperative; the current president of pakistan had his wife benazir bhutto assassinated by terrorists less than a year ago. i am sure he is out for revenge, and luckily the people who killed his wife are the same people we are after: al qaeda and the taliban. another way to help solve this problem of terrorism in that part of the world would be to help india and pakistan achieve peace with each other and sign a treaty that would finally resolve all of their long-standing disputes. international cooperation is really the key to defeating terrorism.

and as for georgia, we should certainly continue to cooperate with them. georgia might not be a perfect country, and they might have started a stupid war this summer that backfired on them horribly, but they are our friends, and we should not completely abandon them. yes, it turns out russia was telling the truth about the war and georgia was lying, but we need to cooperate with all the nations, even ones led by murderous liars like mikhail saakashvili. once we have all the nations of the world cooperating with us, we can help to overthrow bad leaders in other countries and replace them with better ones, and we will have plenty of cooperation and not get stuck doing it unilaterally. with the cooperation of russia, china, japan, and south korea, we could probably overthrow the government of north korea, and reunify korea into a single country, led by the pro-western democratic government of south korea. when george bush, sr. invaded kuwait to push saddam hussein’s iraqi occupation forces out, he had the rest of the world supporting him. that is why the first gulf war went so much better than the second one that we are fighting now. this time around, the rest of the world opposes our war in iraq, and the few nations who do support us are still almost all unwilling to help us out in any meaningful way. only the united kingdom has really helped us out significantly in that war. that is part of why the war in iraq has been such a fiasco. of course, there was also tremendous mismanagement under donald rumsfeld, and the war was never justified in the first place, since they kept changing the justifications for the war once each one they were using turned out to be false. there were no weapons of mass destruction, saddam hussein was not a threat to us in any way, and we completely failed to understand all of the tensions between sunnis, shiites, and minority religions or between arabs, kurds, and other ethnic groups. it is a war that was based on lies, that was horribly mismanaged, and that barack obama is going to have to end, with the help of dubya’s 2nd defense secretary, bob gates, who will be staying on to work for obama. and in the case of georgia, our government gave georgia mixed signals that they misinterpreted as a green light to invade south ossetia and abkhazia. we need to be much more careful about the signals we give to other countries and not accidentally green-light any foolish military misadventures. of course, the war between georgia and russia was not really our fault, because mikhail saakashvili is completely insane. but in a way it is sort of our fault, because we are the ones who put him in power in the first place (and by we i mean the united states government that we elected).

regarding holy joe

holy joe, a.k.a. senator joseph lieberman from connecticut, of the connecticut for lieberman party, has been in charge of the u.s. senate’s homeland security committee ever since democrats took control of the senate. part of the reason is that the democrats needed his support in order to have a majority in the senate. if he had caucused with the republicans, they would have been able to form a majority based on the tie-breaking vote of vice president dick cheney. holy joe, as he is nicknamed, is a former democrat who ran for vice president in the year 2000 as al gore’s running mate. he left the democratic party in 2006 and founded the connecticut for lieberman party to run for office that year, after he was beaten in the democratic primary for senator by ned lamont. then holy joe went on to win the general election in 2006, with most of his support coming from republicans, and most democrats voted for ned lamont. however, republicans overwhelmingly supported holy joe, and lots of democrats (but less than half) also supported him, as well as a majority of independents. so anyway, since being re-elected in 2006 to a 6-year term in the u.s. senate, joe lieberman has caucused with the democrats, helping harry reid be majority leader instead of minority leader, and he forced the democrats to give him concessions in exchange for his support, such as putting him in charge of the homeland security committee. most democrats in the senate do not put any conditions on their support for the democratic party, but then again, joe lieberman is not a democrat anymore, even though in 2004 he ran for president of the united states as a democrat. anyway, when he ran for re-election in 2006, joe lieberman made 2 very important promises repeatedly: he promised to caucus with the democrats and support having them be in charge of the senate, and he promised to support the democratic presidential nominee for the 2008 presidential election. many prominent democrats offered their support to joe lieberman in 2006 in the primary against ned lamont, including both bill and hillary clinton, barack obama, and pretty much all the other big names, and joe lieberman STILL lost the primary, despite all that support from the party establishment. soon after being re-elected, joe lieberman decided to support john mccain’s presidential campaign, despite john mccain being a republican. joe lieberman, by doing this, was clearly and openly violating a campaign promise he made to the voters of connecticut to support the democratic nominee for president in 2008. since that time, joe lieberman has very often spoken in favor of john mccain for president, criticized barack obama quite harshly, and he even gave the keynote address at the republican national convention earlier this year. now that the 2008 elections are over, the people have spoken and have overwhelmingly rejected republican rule, electing barack obama president by a huge margin in the electoral college, and picking up a number of senate seats. at this point in time, the democrats have enough senate seats to render joe lieberman irrelevant. there is absolutely no need to give in to holy joe’s demands to be in charge of the homeland security committee or some other powerful committee. he has consistently praised john mccain and other republicans and criticized barack obama and other democrats. while his voting record on issues other than the war in iraq and national security is quite liberal, his public statements and behavior show that he is much closer to the republicans than the democrats. it is ridiculous for him to demand to be in charge of a powerful committee or else he will leave and join the opposition minority republican party where he will have no power. and, as someone who is liberal on most issues, i doubt the republican party will have much taste for having someone like him among their ranks, and they will want someone more conservative to replace him. as a practical matter, the republicans are probably smart enough not to do that, and they would probably keep him if he switched to republican, and have him run for re-election in 2012 as a republican, whereas in the democratic party he has no future after 2012, since most democrats hate his guts at this point. so, as for holy joe, if he wants a career after 2012, it might be a good idea to switch to the republican party, regardless of whether the democrats let him be in charge of a powerful committee, since he is unlikely to win another election in connecticut if he tries to run as a democrat. holy joe was probably rooting for john mccain to win because, among other reasons, he thought he might get a cabinet post, and he was actually john mccain’s top pick to be vice presidential nominee until steve schmidt vetoed that. steve schmidt’s top pick was mitt romney, but john mccain vetoed that pick. they both settled on sarah palin, their mutual second choice that neither of them knew much about. anyway, back to holy joe... if the democrats kick him out, this may make them look bad, since they are supposed to be acting bipartisan and that is what barack obama’s message is. however, he is a traitor to the party, which he has proven hundreds of times he has said or done things to betray the democratic party, and he is not even in the party anymore. he can continue to caucus with the democrats if he wants, or caucus with the republicans if he wants. it is a free country, and that is a choice that is completely up to him. however, the democratic leadership in the senate can decide who to put in charge of committees, and their decisions should not be held hostage by rogue elements within the senate with ulterior motives to undermine the ruling party while pretending to be part of it. we have seen that there were rogue elements in the mccain-palin campaign that were actively working to undermine their own campaign through negative leaks to the press that were damaging to either sarah palin or john mccain. i have read online about the reasons for that, and primarily it is because most of these political operatives working for the mccain campaign were hired on after he won the primaries, and their loyalty is not to their 2008 candidate, john mccain, or to his running mate, sarah palin. many of them worked for other candidates such as mitt romney, mike huckabee, or others, and their loyalties still lie with those other candidates, and they saw the writing on the wall that john mccain was going to lose to barack obama in an electoral college landslide, so they decided to help out their favored candidate for the 2012 election by making sarah palin look bad. these operatives were worried that sarah palin might be a leading contender in 2012 when barack obama is up for re-election, and they wanted to destroy her politically so that mitt romney or mike huckabee or someone like that would be the republican candidate instead in 2012. these traitors to the mccain-palin campaign continue to leak bad things to the press, even after the campaign is over and john mccain has conceded the election, and they have said a lot of very negative things about sarah palin. my point is, in politics, you do not want to be working with traitors because traitors are traitors and they will betray you. john mccain is a traitor to the democratic party, something he has proven many, many times, and there is no reason for the democratic party to reward his anti-democratic, pro-republican behavior by putting him in charge of an important committee. there is absolutely no reason, however, for the democrats to even consider ejecting him from the democratic caucus or kicking him out, because he can freely choose which party to be a member of. however, he is not in a position to dictate terms to the democratic senate leadership, because he is in a minority of 1. there are not any other senators from the connecticut for lieberman party. joe lieberman can vote however he wants and say whatever he wants and campaign for whoever he wants, but in this country we also believe in personal responsibility and being held accountable for your actions, and we believe that if you are a traitor to an organization (such as the democratic party for example), it would be foolish for that organization to reward you for your traitorous actions by giving you a leadership position so you can actively undermine them from within. just as foolish as the libertarian party was by choosing bob barr as its presidential candidate this year, despite the fact that bob barr is not a libertarian and that for almost all of his political career, his views have been diametrically opposed to libertarian views on most issues important to libertarians. many libertarians gave up on the libertarian party because of the fiasco of them choosing bob barr as their nominee. look, should the democrats put someone like me in an important leadership position, such as white house press secretary? hell no. i would totally suck ass at something like that, and i am very bad at staying on message. i say what i think, which is not always what people want to hear or what the party line currently is. for instance, i don’t believe in god and i am a subgenius. that would not sit well with most people. also, i am very left-wing, and i don’t know whether i am a socialist or not, because i am unclear about what the word “socialist” actually means, after hearing it debated in the media a lot recently. i think i might be socialist but it depends on how you define it. i’ll put it this way: i am exactly as socialist as franklin delano roosevelt was, no more, no less. and by today’s standards, franklin delano roosevelt would be an ultra-left-wing radical. okay, i am a little more liberal than fdr; for instance, i would not have put japanese-americans in internment camps, because that was a very conservative thing to do. and i am more liberal than harry truman; i would not have dropped nuclear weapons on innocent civilians in hiroshima and nagasaki, because that was a very conservative thing to do. i am definitely more liberal and closer to a socialist than john f. kennedy, lyndon johnson, jimmy carter, bill clinton, or barack obama. that being said, i completely despise marxism and communism, as it is an authoritarian, totalitarian form of government where people have no rights. i believe in the socialism of the wealthy nations of europe, nations such as sweden or switzerland, or actually the vast majority of western and northern europe, as well as the great country of canada to our north. now, there are some reasons i do not prefer living in those countries to the united states: first of all, the english language is the only language that makes any sense whatsoever, so that eliminates all other countries except for the united kingdom and canada. ireland and australia are both wealthy countries but they are much more capitalist, like the united states. canada has cold weather and i hate cold weather, plus they have all that silly french-speaking nonsense. so maybe canada, but only the southernmost parts of it or some part where the weather is nice. but really, i think the best foreign country to live in for me personally would be the united kingdom. i have always thought the british are quite awesome. however, the united kingdom has a rather dysfunctional form of government, where they still have a queen and a house of lords and no constitution to guarantee people’s fundamental rights, and margaret thatcher privatized everything in the 1980s with her right-wing rule. so really, the united kingdom is not that great either, plus the economy in that country is not that good. in the end, i like the united states best, because we have the most freedom and the most prosperous economy, we are the most powerful nation on earth, i was born and raised here and love my country, and i share the same language and culture as the vast majority of americans, plus the only politics i really care about is american politics. so, while i think people in other countries have some good ideas that should probably be adopted here, that in no way means that i would rather move to those countries. as for the non-english-speaking countries, i have heard very wonderful things about sweden, for instance, from a friend of mine who is swedish. however, i have absolutely no intention of learning a foreign language and living in a country where english is not the main language. that for me is a complete deal-breaker. i am only willing to consider english-language countries, and i like the united states best. well ok, i forgot to mention another relatively prosperous english-speaking nation: new zealand. i have heard a lot of good things about new zealand, actually. i don’t know much at all about that country. it seems like an interesting place, certainly a nicer place to live than neighboring australia. then again, there is a tropical paradise that is part of the united states, namely hawaii, and i could go there instead. as for the continental united states, i am not too fond of the southeast, and i have been to florida many times and it is a rather messed up state. i also know that texas and california are quite messed up as well, in different ways than florida. new york is a very messed up state, too. so is alaska. it is hard to think of states that are actually run well, in a way that i agree with. ok so as far as florida is concerned, the 2000 election fiasco really turned me off on florida, and when i go there, things are just... well... kind of messed up. it is hard to explain exactly. there are a whole lot of old people, and florida is rather right-wing, and the air smells of sulfur when people use their sprinkler systems to water their lawns, and the weather gets a bit too hot in the summer (although going in the swimming pool solves that problem), and there are lots of problems with pesky insects because it never freezes in winter. as for texas... ugh... it is where george w. bush is from, and is a very very right-wing state, they have so many executions, and i just do not like texas at all. as for california, they obviously have very dysfunctional politics, their state is deeply in debt, they have tons of violent crime in the big cities, housing prices are astronomically high and completely unaffordable, and a lot of really good people have been laid off from silicon valley and those people know a lot about computers so i cannot really compete with them for jobs. as for new york, our state is also deeply in debt, our winters are cold, taxes are too high, the economy here is very bad, and everything is such a mess that most of the young people leave to find better jobs elsewhere. as for alaska, they have the coldest weather in the nation, their governor is sarah palin, and they most likely just re-elected senator ted stevens, a convicted felon 7 times over. alaska is very right-wing, they have the highest rates of rape of any state, and their state rips off the rest of the country in a very big way by taking in more money from the federal government than they pay to the federal government, per capita, more so than any other state. new york is at the opposite end of the spectrum, and is the arch-enemy of alaska, since we pay a lot more to the federal government each year in taxes than we get back in government spending, more so than any other state. new york has a debt of about $50 billion i think, and every year we send $87 billion more to the federal government than we get back. so if the federal government just treated new york equally to other states for 1 year, we could easily pay off our state’s entire debt and save up an extra $37 billion or so, and it would greatly benefit our state’s economy. similarly, the economy of alaska is heavily dependent on u.s. federal government spending that greatly exceeds taxes to the federal government paid by alaskans, and if the u.s. government treated alaska equally to other states, the entire economy of alaska would completely collapse, and everyone would either flee the state to someplace safe, or die there in the cold north. i am not sure which state i like best, but right now i am leaning towards hawaii, although i have never been there and do not really know that much about it. anyway, i have gotten off on a bit of a tangent there, talking about various potential places to live, and it is time to return to the main topic of joe lieberman. joe lieberman is someone most democrats despise and most republicans adore. it makes perfect sense for him to switch parties. he might as well just do it. it is ridiculous for him to make unreasonable demands to democratic party leaders after he openly betrayed the democratic party so many times, most notably with his keynote address at this year’s republican national convention. joe lieberman is not a bipartisan or nonpartisan kind of guy. he is fiercely partisan, pro-republican, and anti-democrat, something that is obvious every time he opens his lying mouth. we do not need him at all, and he has no relevance or importance whatsoever, but he can stay on our side if he really wants. it is time for joe lieberman to be cast into the dustbin of history along with the bush administration and the rest of the neocons who got us into the quagmire in iraq. i never want to see him on tv again or hear him mentioned in the news again. he is annoying and i hate him and want him to just go away and leave me alone when i am trying to watch or read the news without annoying characters like him popping into the news stories to distract me from the important things actually going on in the world. paris hilton is more relevant in the news than joe lieberman. that is how irrelevant i think he is. putting him in charge of an important committee is like putting the fox in charge of guarding the henhouse. he should just join the republicans officially so we can be done with all this drama over his traitorous judas/benedict arnold type behavior. and after he does that, i never want to see him or hear from him again in any news broadcasts or news stories. if he were a republican, his behavior would be understandable, because he acts just like any republican. the problem is that he keeps pretending not to be a republican, despite the fact that he has nothing but praise for republicans and nothing but criticism for democrats. imagine 2 sports teams going up against each other in a game, and 1 player on one of the teams keeps helping out the other team and helping them beat his own team. that is just wrong. if you do not support your own team, leave it and join the team you actually do support. this also applies to republicans who are disloyal to their party, such as colin powell or many other republicans who have endorsed or praised barack obama and/or criticized john mccain and/or sarah palin and/or george w. bush. i invite them all to join the democratic party, where they can express their disloyalty to the republicans even further. however, they had better learn to be loyal to the democrats once they have joined our team, or else our team will never make the playoffs.

“secret” conservative meeting

conservatives are planning a “secret” meeting thursday, 2 days after the election, to strategize about why they will have lost and what to do in the future. their meeting will apparently focus on how they think the republican party has gotten too centrist and mainstream, and has to abandon the moderate middle completely and become a completely wacko ultra-right-wing extremist party if it ever wants to win again. so let me get this straight: voters are going to be rejecting conservatism and embracing liberalism as they did in 2006, and conservatives think the answer is to become even more conservative. good idea, if you want to become a permanent minority party. the republicans are so brilliant... their plan is to alienate and insult everyone. they hate gays, they hate muslims, they hate atheists, they hate black people, they hate mexicans, they hate chinese, they hate liberals, they hate democrats, they hate socialists, they hate women, they hate smart people, they hate people who live in urban or coastal areas, etc. ok basically this is how it works: either you are a conservative christian heterosexual white male who is a natural-born u.s. citizen and lives in a rural area far away from the east coast or the west coast and has an iq below 100, or the republicans hate your guts. period. that is what they have devolved into. they insult anyone who does not meet those standards. they do not like anyone who is different from them. and if you think the sarah palin pick means they do not hate women, just look at how the mccain campaign itself has treated sarah palin, and how the mccain camp and the palin camp are now exchanging fire through insults that advisers to each of them leak to the media anonymously. think about why sarah palin was picked: john mccain thought american women, in general, are stupid enough to vote for him just because he picks a female running mate, and he thought that men would be dumb enough to go for it if he picked someone attractive, a former beauty queen. the mccain campaign has either not had a strategy at all, or has had a strategy of appealing to stupid people and nobody else, over these past few months. this first became apparent with the “celebrity” ad john mccain put out comparing barack obama to paris hilton and britney spears. that ad was designed to appeal explicitly to complete morons and nobody else at all. since then, the mccain campaign has consistently appealed to idiots, morons, cretins, retards, dumbasses, fools, the mentally handicapped, the mentally challenged, and subgeniuses. john mccain fake-suspended his campaign in a blatant act of pandering to the retard vote. he again pandered to them with all of his “joe the plumber” nonsense. and sarah palin does nothing but constantly pander to the dumbass demographic. she has become the most unpopular vice presidential nominee in history, out of all the vice presidential nominees that had not yet served as vice president (obviously dick cheney takes the cake in terms of vice presidents up for re-election). and this “secret” meeting of the conservative anti-intelligentsia is not even secret at all, because some idiot went and leaked the story about it to a prominent reporter/blogger on the 2nd most popular political news website, politico (huffington post is #1 and drudge report is down to #3). this just proves yet again what the dubya/cheney administration has been proving for 8 years: conservatives are almost all incompetent fools. a very small percentage of conservatives are actually smart, and this elite intelligentsia are not the people who are being invited to this meeting. why not? because they have all either publicly endorsed barack obama or at least publicly offered harsh criticism of john mccain and/or sarah palin recently. the smart conservatives include people like david brooks and george will, both very intelligent pundits who have been quite critical of john mccain and sarah palin. that does not mean they are actually supporting barack obama, of course, since they have strong philosophical disagreements with barack obama and democrats in general. for them the choice is between idiots they agree with or competent people they disagree with. but i suspect the conservative intelligentsia will not be at this meeting, because this supposedly secret meeting has an agenda of making the republicans into an ultra-conservative party when the rest of the country is moving in the exact opposite direction, towards an all-out embrace of liberalism. if they actually wanted to win, they would campaign from the center, even if they governed from the far right. democrats have learned the importance of campaigning from the center, after the stinging defeats of the 1980s. george w. bush may have “won” the 2000 and 2004 elections, but both elections were quite close, showing that the democrats have not been completely out of it when it comes to campaign strategy. the real deciding factor in elections, other than turnout/get-out-the-vote measures, is the media. the media are a fickle bunch who sometimes favor one side and sometimes the other, but are never neutral. the media game is the most important part of any election nowadays. whoever gets the news media on their side wins the election. period. another part of the media game, besides cozying up to the media and getting them to like you, is attacking the media when they don’t cover you favorably, and trying to dig up dirt on them or turn the public against the media. often when the media are attacked, instead of defending themselves they chicken out and side with their attackers, and admit that the people attacking them are correct. however, the way the media respond depends on the circumstances, because many other times the media holds its ground and does not chicken out. usually republicans are the ones who attack the media the most, while democrats cozy up to the media, both for the same purpose: getting more favorable coverage and less unfavorable coverage. it is clear at this point that barack obama has totally kicked john mccain’s ass when it comes to the media, ever since mid-september when the financial crisis hit. i think people need to remind themselves that reporters and politicians are people too, and they respond to things in a human way just like anyone else. if they are attacked or insulted, they get sad, angry, annoyed, or are just so used to it that they ignore it. if they are praised, they tend to feel really good about themselves and think they are the greatest thing ever, or maybe instead they think the people praising them are mindless brainwashed drones and that their evil plans are working perfectly. anyway, john mccain has seriously mismanaged media relations during this campaign. now the media does lose sometimes, like in 2000, when they overwhelmingly supported john mccain over george w. bush in the republican primaries, and went on to see their favorite guy in the world get beaten badly. nowadays, the media act like john mccain is their ex-husband or ex-boyfriend, and they are spurned former lovers out for revenge. that is mainly because john mccain is not acting or campaigning at all like he did 8 years ago, and he is not the man they fell in love with anymore, and they feel betrayed. barack obama has had a love affair with the media ever since he first became a national figure, and while there were tough parts this spring when the media went after him with all the rev. wright, tony rezko, and william ayers stuff during the primaries, he managed to get the media back on his side again afterwards. the tough parts for obama only happened after saturday night live parodied the media as being sycophantic obama supporters back this spring during the primaries. the media overreacted to that parody of them by having about a month of almost nothing but negative stories about barack obama, since they felt their reputation for being credible had been undermined and they had to show “balance”. once they felt they had accomplished that, they went back to supporting obama again. and it has been great. there is nothing better, when you are a candidate or a supporter of a candidate, than having the media on your side. remember, the media are people too, and they are the most vital constituency for politicians to pander to. the arch-conservatives going to the not-so-secret meeting are probably the type who like to go on the offense and attack the media for supposedly having a liberal bias. attacking the media may sometimes help you get better coverage in the short term, but in the long run, you alienate the very reporters and commentators you need on your side, and get them to hate your guts permanently. john mccain is understandably upset that the media is not in the tank for him like they were in 2000, and he also feels sorta like a bride left at the altar. he is not really used to negative coverage, because for many years he has been a media darling, and that did not really change until mid-september this year. to some extent though, media coverage just reflects reality, and reality did change in a fundamental way in mid-september when the economy, as john mccain put it, “cratered”. until then, the election had sort of been a big reality tv show and was not really taken too seriously, but now suddenly everything was really serious. and of course, besides the economy thing, sarah palin turned out to be a dismal failure with her media interviews and her debate performance, plus the mccain campaign ran a number of blatantly dishonest advertisements that shocked many journalists who had fallen in love with mccain years ago because they thought he was incredibly honest for a politician. the mccain-palin camapaign has basically been like a disaster movie where everything just goes wrong, and all john mccain himself has offered is an endless series of stunts and gimmicks to try to win the news cycle for a day or two, stunts and gimmicks that usually backfire, but he keeps doing them anyway. it is said that if you do the same thing you did before and expect a different result, that is the definition of insanity, and that is exactly how the mccain campaign has been operating for quite some time. that is also the problem that the people attending the not-so-secret conservative summit suffer from, that same type of insanity. what type of people will be there, if not the actual intellectuals? anti-intellectuals and pseudo-populist demagogues, of course. people like ann coulter, bill o’reilly, rush limbaugh, sean hannity, michael savage, pat buchanan, william kristol, karl rove, dick morris, grover norquist, etc. basically a bunch of professional right-wing propagandists who believe their own bullshit. they are like people who find themselves in a hole and decide to keep digging. i, for one, hope they keep digging themselves even deeper into a hole for quite some time. eventually, of course, they will probably hit some underground oil reserves with all their deep digging, and their chants of “drill baby drill” will finally pay off. and i will keep digging myself into the hole of this metaphor that i have dug too deep, until it makes no sense whatsoever. or i could just end this blog post right here, abruptly.

fun stuff

new wassup video (starring the same people who were in the original wassup videos for budweiser, directed by the same guy, only this time it’s serious stuff, not just joking around)

sarah palin as president (try clicking on everything, EXCEPT THE RED PHONE)

get your war on videos (by the same guy who made the get your war on comic strip)

“joe” the “plumber”

ok, this “joe” the “plumber” thing is getting really out of control, and the republicans have based a huge propaganda campaign on the story of 1 man. john mccain and sarah palin talk about this guy “joe” constantly, they are doing the “joe the plumber bus tour” in honor of him, they have made him the central focus of their campaign at this point, and now “joe” the “plumber” is considering running for congress! the only problems:

1) he is not a licensed plumber and is not registered with the state of ohio as a plumber. if he is engaged in any plumbing in the state of ohio, he is doing it illegally and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

2) his name is not even joe, it’s sam. samuel joseph wurzelbacher is his full name. and he misspelled his last name on his voter registration as “worzelbacher”, so initially reporters did not even think he was registered to vote.

3) the company he said he wants to take over makes nowhere near $250,000 a year, according to sam wurzelbacher’s boss, so it would not face any tax increases under barack obama. in fact, its taxes would go down under barack obama, even more so than they would under john mccain. 98% of small businesses make under $250,000 a year in taxable income, and would not face any tax increases at all in an obama administration.

4) sam wurzelbacher does not actually have any plans to take over the company he works for, and he does not make that much money at his job. he would pay less in taxes under barack obama than under john mccain. he completely made up the thing about taking over the company he works for, and he has no plan on how to run the business or anything like that. he pretended to be much wealthier than he actually is when he talked to barack obama.

5) sam wurzelbacher owes $1,182.98 in back taxes. yeah, he hates taxes so much that he violates the law by refusing to pay them, while working illegally as an unlicensed plumber. plus he has a second tax lien against him that is even bigger: $1,261. i am not sure if those are for the same thing or if they are separate and need to be added up, but in either case, he sure is not a law-abiding tax-paying citizen.

6) sam wurzelbacher willingly submitted himself to the media spotlight and engaged in a large number of interviews with all sorts of media outlets after john mccain made him famous in the final debate of this election season. he willingly submitted himself to scrutiny by the public by doing all these interviews, and so he deserves full and complete scrutiny, just like any other public figure. if john mccain is going to base his entire campaign around the fabricated story of “joe the plumber”, the public has the right to know the truth about sam the unlicensed tax-dodging plumber.

7) this just is yet another example of the larger problem plaguing the mccain campaign: they are so focused on “winning the news cycle” that their entire campaign is based on nothing but a bunch of short-term gimmicks and publicity stunts. that is why they chose sarah palin without vetting her, only to end up having her have much higher disapproval ratings than approval ratings, and having her drag down the ticket with her eventual unpopularity. they picked a totally unqualified intellectual lightweight who does not know anything about economics, international affairs, or other key national issues. remember how the mccain-palin campaign refused to let anyone in the media interview her for quite a while after she was chosen as vice presidential nominee? they realized they had a problem on their hands after experienced campaign staffers who talked to her realized she was a complete idiot, even dumber than george w. bush. (dubya actually managed to graduate yale and then harvard, something sarah palin could never do.) and remember john mccain suspending his campaign to go fix the economy? yeah, that sure worked great. good job... not!

ok, so you get the point? john mccain would never have made the entire 3rd debate about “joe” the “plumber” and then based his entire candidacy around “joe” the “plumber” afterwards unless he were really, REALLY desperate. “joe” the “plumber” went through absolutely zero vetting by the mccain-palin campaign, and is proving to be a big embarrassment to them, but they have to pretend like nothing is wrong, just like they have to pretend that picking sarah palin was not a mistake and fake-suspending the campaign was not a mistake. “joe” the “plumber” is actually a typical american just like you or me; plenty of people don’t pay their taxes, are not licensed in their professions, and are not really that smart. his flaws make him all the more human, all the more like the idiots you run into every day. but he does not speak for anyone except himself, and he is not an honest person, plus he is only slightly smarter than sarah palin, which means he is still mentally retarded. so, in the final analysis, what are we to make of all this?

republicans were right to pick george w. bush over john mccain in 2000, because john mccain is a complete jackass who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground (only look at the LAST panel of that old comic from march). sure, george w. bush turned out to be the worst president in all of american history by far, but john mccain would have been even worse, judging by his performance in the last few months. a senile old ronald reagan in the final stages of alzheimer’s would be better than john mccain. my dog would do a better job as president than john mccain. a dead single-celled organism would do a better job than john mccain. john mccain sucks more than a paralyzed-from-the-waist-down old prostitute who only does blowjobs. john mccain is a bigger loser than the runner-up on the tv show called “the biggest loser”. who the hell panders to moderates during the primaries and caucuses and then reaches out to his party’s base in the general election? john mccain has everything back-asswards. if he actually wins the presidency this november, congress should have him and sarah palin sent to a mental institution for incurable insanity, and nancy pelosi should be sworn in as president due to john mccain and sarah palin being mentally incapacitated. after all, the speaker of the house is next in line to be president after the vice president, and nancy pelosi is very knowledgeable and qualified, and would be ready on day 1.

nancy pelosi for president! (or barack obama, in the incredibly unlikely event that he wins.)

oh, and read this article about john mccain. please.