Thanks to Crooks & Liars, we can watch Bill O’Reilly lie mercilessly about American GIs in WW2 to try and talk down the criticism of American GIs murdering civilians in Iraq.

Watch the whole video.

Recently the New York Times and other guardians of our press freedoms have taken the time to tackle a problem that really affects us all and must be scrutinized under the unforgiving light of the truth: Do the Clintons still fuck?

I don’t know if you can tell, but that’s a wee lil’ bit o’ sarcasm there. The press obsession with the Clenis and “Frigid Hillary” makes me want to jump and scream for someone’s head on a plate like some tiny pot-bellied monarch. To me there is only one plausible reason for it, and it’s not ratings, because I doubt people care. That reason’s gotta be that it’s coming from the top. The editors and owners are telling the staff: “We want more stories about how often Bill and Hill hang out together. Do something about which direction Bill’s penis points. Gotta have my penis-direction-article baby.”

The recent nomination of the CEO of Goldman-Sachs, one of the most secretive corporations in the country, made me think about corporate malfeseance a little more than usual. Maybe we’ve forgotten, or been inured to, the level of slime that coated every media outlet during Clinton’s presidency. The sorry state of the press back then was matched only by the sorry state of its audience. Do you remember 24/7 “Bimbogate”? Every liar, cheat, scumbag and con artist who a) was from Arkansas (not a great sign) and 2) could peddle a slightly believable story about Clinton’s weenis. The talking heads of the press were spending their days considering with all their gravitas whether or not someone had a cigar in someone else’s vagina. It was sickening. It was a massive betrayal of the public trust by the press and the GOP Congress that directed it, primarily Tom DeLay. It was also a massive barrage in the war against democracy being waged to this day by the Mogul Class.

The fusion of corporate and government power is called fascism. Our nation, right now, this second, is in a life-or-death battle with fascism. Look at the massive expansion of presidential powers….Bush is claiming he can exercise all wartime powers on citizens on U.S. soil with the only qualifier being that he deems them dangers to national security. Read that again, because it’s fuckin’ scary: Bush can treat you like a terrorist captured in a war zone, with no oversight, no accountability and no recourse. Even if you’re an American citizen. This is not a conspiracy theory either, it’s the Bush administration’s own defense for illegal wiretapping. Bush was illegally ordering wiretapping by the NSA as he signed the law he was violating. That’s big-time hypocrisy. So their defense? Nothing Bush does is illegal because Bush is doing it. QED.

Makes your head spin a little don’t it? But wait! Look at the stories being reported on a daily basis….look at the FRONT PAGE of that old liberal harlot, the New York Times. What was on there? Thousands of screaming column-inches about violating civil liberties, high-minded rhetoric defending the sacred citizen’s right to stand and remake their government if it ceases to do their work?

No.

Hillary’s panties. This, apparently, needed examination.

So some creep at the Times did a stupid retread story reinforcing the media’s already strong bias against Hillary, making their own narrative sound truer to them while the miss the feeling of the public. Who cares? Well, every word uttered about Clinton is a word you cannot direct at Frist, Hastert, Bush, Cheney, and the other fascists. Every time someone says “wow, that Clinton sure is a scumbag!” the attention paid to the guy who’s been out of freaking office for almost 6 years keeps us from pointing out that telcos are trying to steal the free and open internet. Every time someone wonders about wether Hillary’s a lesbian or not misses a chance to discuss our world’s repairable worsening climate. That’s what. The press is interested in a broad sense in simply distracting you. Keeping you staring at the tube and not looking for real answers. Rupert Murdoch doesn’t want you questioning his influence, CNN and Fox (News Corporation) and ABC and NBC and CBS and all of them, they don’t want you looking into their practices. Neither does Halliburton or Baker Botts or uh Enron (oops) or Westar or any of a long and growing list of shysters, crooks and bribery-freaks. The media is just another corporation, with better communications skills. You’re looking at a corporate broadcast when you watch network TV, aor cable TV, or satellite TV. And to corp wants one thing: money.

Money is all that matters to a corp, and power is all that matters to a Republican, and most Democrats, and most third and fourth and whatever party. Money begets power, and power begets money. The Corp and the Pol are perfect for each other, and breed frequently, and when they do we get people like Jack Abramhoff, who you may have heard a tiny bit about. Notice how he dropped out of the news cycle pretty fast? Jack, in a basic sense, served as a matchmaker for horny wealthy Corps looking to hook up with ambitions, athletic Pols. Sometimes they call people like Jack “lobbyists”. I call him a scumbag who should rot in prison. He is at the moment in prison, which is nice. But back to the point: there exists a whole class of people who make it their life’s work getting other scumbags in office, and train them to do what their clients want once they get them there. And it’s killing democracy. Not figuratively, literally.

The opaque nature of any corp makes it a piss-poor vehicle for democracy and a great seedbed for fascism. The corporate model is the fascist model…top-down, highly secretive, catering to a certain class (Upper class or shareholders) and exploiting the rest for everything they can get, including their customers (or citizens, to carry the metaphor yet further. Jeez it’s gettin heavy).

The nature of most pols makes them very receptive to heaps of cash they will use to further their power. They want power, and use money to get it. The corps want money, and use power to get it.

Lordy I could go on. The only thing I really wanted to say is watch your ass. The government, our government, is working in lockstep with corps to create a lasting fascist state built around maximizing profits for corporations and personally enriching a gradually-less-representative permanent governing class. If we’re not careful, it will never come to blows….we’ll be quietly taken away without raising a whimper. Think I’m crazy? Fine. But stop waiting around to find out. Check it out. Look into the facts of what the Bush admin is doing, what the Congress has done, and what corps are quietly and not-so-quietly helping out. Check out Arnold in the months before California’s energy crisis, before he’s even governator, meeting with Kenny Lay and other energy bigwigs in a secret powwow. That one’s nice.

http://gregpalast.com/
http://buzzflash.com/
http://c2ore.com/archives/?itemid=1220
http://dailykos.com/

Yep.

sometimes, i imagine life is just a huge bulldog, and its biting the top half of your head, and it’s like a dog-shaped hat you have pulled too far down over your eyes, and you have this terrible fashion sense, but no! you’ve got a bulldog eating the top half of your head! You’re not badly dressed at all. well, you could be. but the dog thing is still more important.

I took friday and monday off work in anticipation of birthday hijinx (i’m an elderly man now) and nothin’ happened. i had a good time saturday night with jerm and kerm and jeff an des but nothing out of the ordinary. i did drink several fruity sweet shots, so i guess that’s not ordinary.

everyone seems to be on some kind of stupid existential grief-trip at the moment, and i’m not into it. i feel pretty good for an old freakin fogey, and i’d rather have a fun time than grouse and mope. i spent most of my life grousing and moping and mewling and whatnat, enough already! i’m going to be dead for so much longer than i’m alive it’s ridiculous. as a matter of fact…if the universe is infinite (ie, it won’t end, it’ll just expand forever) than my life is comparatively non-existant, therefore i don’t even exist. take that!

ah ha, but I do exist. I just farted. my wrists hurt from…uh…typing. i can hear a small child constantly turning on the speakerphone in my office (it’s true, i can). so the universe will end at some point.

I guess that’s kind of cool, that I exist and all. though none of you reading this have any proof of this.

you know what’s cute? kittens! and babies!

Put them together? BLOODSPORT.

I say “Bush is one insane motherfucker, he’s going to try and set his own ass up as Emperor” five years ago, and no one cares. Then he goes and decides he can interpret laws as he wants to, based on his “signing statements”, a bare-assed usurpation of Legislative and Judicial powers. He decides the Constitution doesn’t apply to him, and suspends the First through Fourth, except of course for Mr. Second.

I said a while ago that corporations would try to take over our lives. No one believed me. Well, that’s starting too. Look at this. Telcos are trying to gain the right to block content they don’t like on the internet.

That’s right. They don’t like it, for whatever reason, they block it. So they don’t like it because it’s illegal. “Cool!” you say, ” that would stop nasty shit!” Right. So, now that the process is established, they don’t like something because its…against their financial interests? Like, say, union negotiators posting information for members on their site? Or whistleblowers calling attention to a defective product of an affiliated subsidiary?

So, they don’t like that. Why can’t they block it?

What happens, say, if they, as in the telcos, don’t like YOU?

Just saying.

Owner of myspace.com:

FUCK YOU

Fucking myspace can eat it’s own duodenum.

That is all.

eyup

the other day i was at a restaurant, and i felt happy when my food got there. i took a bite, and after a few chews realized there was a hair in it…a long one.
the nature of our mouths is for things to go in, and continue inwards, and be entered into the digestive process. i had a mouthful of food, and felt a bit awkward jamming my hand in my foody mouth to remove the hair. part of me was disturbed by the thought of swallowing some random hair (mine is pretty short, so i knew it wasn’t mine. unless it was like some random rogue nose hair tucked up in my nasal cavities that got loose. but let’s not think of that), and the bizarre DNA i’d be assimilating, but another part of me fought the urge to just hork up my food and dig around in it for said hair in the middle of a casual dining restaurant. so i kept subtly trying to dart my finger into my mouth and snag the fucker, and the harsh mistress that is peristalsis kept working against me, moving it further and further into my throat. eventually i gave up…and felt the hair sliding down my throat…

i felt conflicting emotions of not caring and of being grossed out. i was not sure how to feel. how would you feel? i believe my reasons for not spewing all over were valid, i mean, come on…its just a hair. We probably eat many, many more disgusting things every day.

so…why do i still feel sad about it inside?

just thinking

i have this band i loved so much…Heavy Vegetable, one of the most fiercely, beautifully creative and wonderful bands i’ve ever laid ears on, as it were. they broke up and some of the band formed Thingy. Then they broke up and went different ways, and the singer formed Pinback with another musician I love, Zack from 3 Mile Pilot.

I found this song in my playlist today and it really pushed me backwards in time, into Raul the Tercel and Boones Farm and ranting at the sky and smoking on rocks.

I wonder if I felt like this then and then changed or felt like this the whole time, but it was just subterranean, buried in me and came out as time wore me down and exposed different parts.

of course i’m not a rock, tho my constituent bits probably contain some rock parts. I have rocked, in the past. I might again.

Cottingley Fairies
Thingy
(Lyrics by Rob Crow)

hey mister barkeep
could you top me off?
top me off?
yeah mister barkeep
please top me off
top me off
I believe what my eyes see
and little Francis and Elsie
and Doyle’s lantern and slides have
convinced me
I know it sounds crazy
I feel half the time
the Cottingley Fairies
watching from behind
(I know it sounds crazy) I can feel
(I feel half the time) their stare
(the Cottingley Fairies) and I want to see
(watching from behind) them there
ahh
la la la la la la la la la
ahh
la la la la la la la la la

I always like it when people transcribe the “La” parts into lyrics.

If you see some heavy Vegetable, or Thingy, or Pinback, or Snotnose, or Rob Crow, grab it, and listen closely, because it’s just plain awesome.