Senate Seat for Sale: Not Cheap

Geez, this is the kind of thing that was supposed to go out with Prohibition. Or at least, the Bush administration.

How fucking stupid do you have to be to advertise that a Senate seat is for sale? Even Dick Cheney pretends that he doesn't profit at all from the creepy things he does (>cough!< Halliburton!) and covers his tracks. This dude is just pathetic. Clean out his desk. Teach him how those license plates are made.

I can't wait to find out who Candidate 5 is. And crap, how much money were Candidates 1 through 4 willing to offer? This is going to be fun.

Please Use Revolving Door

It makes me crazy when people disregard clearly posted signs. Heck, I don't even like it when the signs aren't so clearly posted and they disregard them. I expect people to have a basic understanding of the rules. Most people (most people) don't need a sign saying "Please Don't Stab the Person Standing Next to You" to refrain from doing so. So when there's a sign that gets ignored, my Annoyance Meter goes all kooky.

My least favorite, of course, is the ever-popular "No Smoking" sign. This is by far the worst because smoking is disgusting and, as is the case at the Staten Island Ferry terminal (on the bad side) where scofflaws continually light up on the path to the buses, unavoidable. Right. Under. The. God. Damn. Sign. Argh! Once I even saw an MTA EMPLOYEE offer a light to someone not 5 feet from a "No Smoking" sign. There is no hope for common courtesy. Or my lungs.

But, as obnoxious and gross as the smoking creeps are, there's a part of me that understands it. Particularly at the ferry, where folks have just spent at least 30 minutes on a boat and are about to get on a bus for another who-knows-how-long. They've only got a few precious seconds to get some of that mm-mm-good tarcotine in there before the next leg of their soul-crushing journey from a crappy corporate job in Manhattan to a miserable family on Staten Island. And it is an addiction. So there ya go. Smoking.

What really baffles me, though, is the revolving door. Not the door itself, but people's aversion to it. Now, big office buildings in NYC always have revolving doors alongside normal swing-open doors. (I use the technical terms for things here. Sorry if you have to look up terms like "swing-open doors". Erudition reigns here at the Den.) Naturally, the buildings prefer that you use the revolving doors because their use saves each building thousands of dollars a year (my guess) in heating and cooling costs. And helps to keep the smoke from the phalanx of tobacco addicts in its rightful place. But the swing doors remain usable for emergencies or for people in wheelchairs or with pizzas or whatever.

But there is almost always a sign saying something along the lines of "Please Use Revolving Door". And yet, I see people ignoring these signs every goddamn day of my life. What is it with people? What is so fucking awful about using a revolving door? You have to push it the same way you have to push the revolver. It takes about the same amount of strength. It takes about the same amount of time. Why would you ignore a clearly posted request for something that gives little or no benefit? It says "Please", for crying out loud!

The only possible explanation I can think of is claustrophobia. But you know what, I'm the most claustrophobic person I know. I refuse to get on a subway train if there are too many people on it. And I freak out if I get on and it doesn't move between stations. I see the same people who just ignored the door sign cramming onto the sardine train with no issues whatsoever.

Just this week in the building I work in, I saw the ever-present "Please..." sign placed directly in front of the door. With no gap. There was no way to avoid seeing it. There was no way to get out the door without acknowledging the sign physically. And yet...some dude actually squeezed himself around the sign to use the regular door.

Now, it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket that these people do this. But seriously, what the hell is wrong with people?

Dumb Letters: Canada Sucks at Health Care So We Will Too

From today's LA Times, a big fat dis to Canada and it's crummy crummy health care system. We DON'T want to be like them.

The government should not be guaranteeing "universal healthcare." Healthcare is a need, not a right. Rights are freedoms of action, not automatic claims on goods and services that must be produced by another. There's no such thing as a "right" to a car or an appendectomy. Whenever the government attempts to guarantee a service such as healthcare, it must control it, leading to Canadian-style rationing and waiting lists.

Instead of universal healthcare, we need free-market reforms, such as allowing patients to purchase insurance across state lines and use health savings accounts for routine expenses, and allowing insurers to sell inexpensive, catastrophic-only policies to cover rare but expensive events. Such reforms could reduce costs and make insurance available to millions who cannot currently afford it.

Paul Hsieh, MD
Sedalia, Colo.

This letter isn't stupid crazy batshit dumb. But it does fail to justify itself with anything concrete. The arguments are as old and weak as Nancy Reagan.

Fist of all, I completely agree with Dr. Hsieh's first statement. I don't believe that health care is a right. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have it. Roads aren't a right either. They are a good provided by another. And the troopers patrolling them are a service provided by another. But the government builds them and staffs them because they help us. We seem to think that's okay. The argument that health care isn't, or shouldn't be, a "right" is immaterial.

Dr. Hsieh really falls apart when he brings Canada into the equation. He leads off the sentence with the premise that the government must "control" what it guarantees. Well, duh-fucking-uh. Did we expect the government to take something over and then just let it sit there? We've had enough of that with FEMA over the past eight years. The concept is ludicrous and only mentioned because, as we all know, government is always bad and the private sector is always good. The words "government" and "control" in the same sentence are meant only to scare you.

Now, where is the proof that universal health care in America will lead to rationing and waiting lists? Where? Our economy is a gazillion times greater than Canada's, even now. We have more than enough resources to cover everybody with no waiting lists and no rationing. We could have done it with room to spare with the money we spent, and continue to spend, in Iraq. Or that we just gave to Wall Street. The argument holds no water. (Notice also that free marketeers always point to Canada and its problems and never to, say, France, which does it really well.)

So, now that Dr. Hsieh has conclusively established that universal healthcare is a bad idea (rationing! government control!) he can stick the knife in with the old free-marketeers' standby. That's right, the health care market is just not open enough. If we just allow people to shop more, we'll all be okay.

Dude, I don't want to be able to afford health care. I don't want to shop. I just want to get it. Get it? These "reforms" will just lead to more money trickling UP to your pals in the insurance industry.

Fuck you, Dr. Hsieh, if that is your real name. And the insurance company you're shilling for.

Dumb Letters: Legal Evils

This kind of crap makes me crazy. It never ends. This is from today's NY Times.

When something is this loaded with stupid, we have to take it bit by bit, to allow the proper amount of jaw-dropping and snarky refutation for each nugget of poop. Here we go.

When we release the prisoners now at Guantánamo Bay, many will go back to their homelands and carry out attacks similar to what we just saw in India.

And this is to be proven how, exactly? Do we know which ones? If we have their plans for doing so, we've got enough to keep detaining them, don't we? And if we don't, well then, this is just fear-mongering and speculation. And this isn't Minority Report. Or is it?

And despite what many say, I believe that these people would have done this before they came to Gitmo, and not because of it.

Maybe. But if you piss on a hornet's nest, they're a lot more likely to sting you. And once again we're dealing with "these people", as if they're all cut from the same cloth and all have the same motives. This is the essence of xenophobia.

So the question becomes: What do you do with a person so evil that he will never give up the idea of killing Westerners until they are dead?

Well, I'd say you probably wanna lock 'em up. But we'll need some kind of way to determine which ones this applies to. Some kind of, I don't know, legal system.

Again, does this apply to all of them? How do we know? And here we also see the entrance of the dreaded "e" word. They're evil! Not criminals. Not war criminals. Not even deranged. But evil. If this is your view of the world then don't even bother making a legal or logical argument. You don't have one.

I eagerly await Barack Obama’s plan to try these barbarians in United States federal court. Security, both physical and national, will be a nightmare.

Ah, yes, barbarians. Barbarians, of course, are one step above cro-magnons. Naturally, such a being is undeserving of legal protections afforded to the civilized and non-evil (and white).

Obama doesn't need a "plan". We've had one in place for two centuries. It's our basic American legal process. It works fine. If they're guilty, they go to jail. If not, they don't. We've tried a few folks in civilian courts and so far no security nightmare. My guess is that the nightmare would only come from assheads like this causing a fuss at the courthouses.

Teaching about constitutional law and actually having to protect America and enforce the law are two very different things. We’ll see how Professor Obama reacts to his first encounter with reality.

Eric Smith
Stafford, Va.

Um, yeah. Switch out "teaching about constitutional law" for "running a few oil companies into the ground" or "fleecing a city for money for your baseball team" and you've got the problem with the last eight years. I think that teaching about constitutional law is a pretty good training ground for learning how to uphold said constitution. Call me crazy. Hell, just reading the damn thing once should have helped.

I love the word "reality" in this context. It's always used to imply that "reality"="maniacs want to kill us and anyone who says we shouldn't behave just as maniacally in response is a big fat pussy who hates his country and wants to see us all die". Here's reality in my estimation: on Inauguration Day the president swears to uphold our constitution. If he doesn't uphold it, he breaks that oath and disqualifies himself for the office. He does not swear to protect us, although it would be nice if he did that too. But it's not in the basic contract. Our ideals are more important than any individual life or group of lives.

And it's President-elect Obama to you, fucknut.

She's STILL Pro-Life

So, I know that not everyone regards other life forms as worthy of compassion. But even societies that eat other animals used to treat them with respect. Some even had big rituals where they thanked the animal for their flesh and venerated their souls. (Look it up yourself. I'm too lazy today.)

Not in Aw Shucks, Alaska though. And frankly, not in your local Ralph's-supplying abbatoir either. You've probably seen this already, or at least read about it. It's not overly graphic but it certainly conveys the casualness of slaughter.



Really, is this the only vantage point from which they could have conducted this interview? Grim.

Happy Thanksgiving!

She'll Use Small Words, So Georgie Can Read It

So apparently Mrs. Idiot is now planning her memoirs. It's telling that her reading list includes "The Brothers Karamazov" and "Beloved" but excludes "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and "My Pet Goat".

I've got a good title for her new book:

"I Can't Believe I've Squandered 30 Years with This Fucking Illiterate"

Thought

Not Thought of the Day, Thought of the Month or Thought of the Long Weekend. Just Thought. Thought of the Day always makes it seem like you should think about it today and then think about something else tomorrow.

One of my college professors always said that if something is worth reading it's worth reading twice. I feel the same way about thoughts.

And I have been re-reading things lately. My most recent re-reading thing is a collection of Kafka's short fiction, including "The Metamorphosis" and "In the Penal Colony". Included in the collection are some other works, themselves anthologies, that contain brief, often very brief, stand-alone pieces. Here's one in its entirety from the collection "A Country Doctor" (the title piece of which is a hair-raiser, by the way, if you haven't read it).

The Next Village

My grandfather used to say: "Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that - not to mention accidents - even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey."

So much to see. So much to read. So much to learn. So much to do. So much to feel. So much to think about. Don't even tell me you're bored. I'll slap you.

Da da da da da da da da, WAX-MAN!

Yes, Henry Waxman. The Waxman. He looks like a villain but he's one of the good guys.

So far in our election hangover we've seen Mr. President-elect pick some fine not-so-liberal folks for his team. We've also seen him support the retention of Senator Douchebag while the knife wound in his back was still fresh.

The one clear victory for progressives so far (other than the fact that The Idiot is leaving soon, which couldn't help but move us in the right direction, even if it's not far enough) is Mr. Waxman's ousting of John Dingell as head of the Energy and Commerce Commitee. Dingell has been in the pockets of the auto industry forever and has almost single-handedly prevented us from moving to smaller and more fuel-efficient cars. He's opposed increased fuel efficiency every step of the way. Global warming and, more importantly, plain old pollution have been the winners. (Not to mention that old standby, reliance on foreign sources of energy. You know which one.) If you like asthma, Dingell's you're man.

Waxman isn't perfect. (Shock!) He spent way too much time trying to nail steroid-using ballplayers to the wall. It didn't work because they were so bulked up the nails kept breaking on their skin.

But he's very strong on environmental issues and should actually move us in the right direction for a change. Hope.

Joe Lieberman: Douchebag Extraordinaire

So, let's just say I'm your pal. I'm such a good pal that you let me use your car. And you let me join that exclusive club you belong to. And you let me hang out with you even after I slagged your new friend and then convinced our other friends to keep me in the club even after I was voted out. Okay, you forgave me and for that I thank you. Mighty big of you.

So, next your biggest enemy comes along and says that you're a total pud and that you do the nasty with your mama. So what do I do? Well, I say, "Yeah, he's a total pud and I heard about that mama thing. It's scary, dude. And ya know what else? The whole club's a bunch of puds. Fuck those fucking puds." Then I let your enemy drive your car and crash it while he's drunk. And then blame you for it.

What's your next move? Tell me to piss off? Why no, of course. You give me the keys to your new car and whole-heartedly welcome me back to the club. Why?

Because you're a congressional Democrat, that's why.

Why the fucking fuck is fucking Joe Lieberman still in charge of anything? I know, I know. We're all in the spirit of bipartisanship. Fuck bipartisanship. Bipartisanship for the past 8 years has meant "everybody do what the president wants." Don't complain. Don't argue. You wouldn't want to be "partisan" now, would you? Bullshit.

Now we're all supposed to be "bipartisan" even after the criminals are being bounced out. Why? Because the wrong people are in power now, apparently. Partisanship is only good if it's not Democrats who are engaged in it.

Joe Lieberman is a goddamn traitor. And not an honorable one. He is more than welcome to believe anything he wants. He is more than welcome to support whomever he wants in any election. He is more than welcome to say anything he damn well pleases. But why on earth is he being rewarded for it? What kind of jellyfish does that?

It's bad enough that he supported McPain and slagged Obama throughout the whole election. You can make the argument that stripping him of his chairmanship for that would be petty. Although I'd argue with you there.

But the entire time he chaired the Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee he did nothing (NOTHING!) about the Bush administration's continual lawbreaking. The man did not do his job. In fact, he aided and abetted criminal behavior when he was charged with calling it out and exposing it. This alone is grounds for dismissal. And censure, if you ask me.

Simply put, he didn't do his job. He was worse than ineffective; he was destructive. A normal person in a normal job would be fired for such a thing. And yet here we are, with Joe Lieberman in exactly the same place he was in same time last year. (Oh, wait, he lost one little subcommittee chair. That'll show him.) The man is not a Democrat. And he does not believe what Democrats believe. At least not in the department in which he holds power. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.

I'm Back

Did you even notice I was gone? I spent a long weekend at a music conference, so blogging was just not happening. It was filed right next to "sleeping" in things I wasn't doing.

Like you care.