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June 14, 2008
I never respond to these damn things. I hit the delete key faster than Dick Cheney can get off six rounds of buckshot into an old man's face... nor am I superstitious (cross my heart and hope to die...) but since it was a lazy Saturday morning, the original "subject line" got my attention...so I opened it. (Yes, I'm still the dumb ass most of you probably remember me as...)
But the fact is, the thought and message underlying this totally useless waste of time struck me pretty hard. Coming on the heels of the death of one of my favorite political talking heads yesterday, Tim Russert, at the ripe young age of 58... Well, once you read this, you'll see where I'm going with this.
After four years of doing this, I think it's high-time I threw some of you a lifeline. I guess I've been doing the Daily Rant and posting to the Activist Forum for so long now, I'm on here most everyday, (when in town), and, perhaps, just took for granted all the powerful functions of the software were self-evident. Some of your emails and postings tell me different. What I'm ready to admit here is that a) they are not self-evident, and b) I'll take the rap for not having on-line help available to help the new Ranters out.
I recently posted a comment in The Forum that I wanted to see 11 pitch (minimum) or 12 pitch (maximum) font. I also urged Ranters to stay away from the dark colors, which when "bolded", are too blurry for most eyes to follow. I thought many of you were in the same boat.... but then I never told any of you how to do it!
In an effort to assist some of you who seem to be having trouble figuring out how to use the special text features of The Forum, although I'm not sure I grasp all of this powerful software myself, let me try to help you out. "Popular demand" tells me it's time for a quick "ops" class on how to add color, make text larger, upload pictures, etc. Let me give it a shot....
Today, as we slam our green beer, jam corned beef and cabbage down our pieholes, and ask those people who keep stepping on our fingers to help us back up on our bar stool, it's time to reflect on the yet another dubious quality (other than warmongering) in which America leads the international community: obesity! Whenever one of these national holidays come around, I can't help but think why they were contrived. That's easy! They were invented so card & candy companies, bars & restaurants, florists, and department stores can gouge us for some quick cash. At the same time, America can take yet another step toward its own demise as the second coming of the Fall of the Roman Empire with its obsession with gluttony.
The US Surgeon General (one of the few soothsayers remaining in our current administration) recently reported that Americans have shortened their lives by 5 full years, and that now 2 out of every 3 people are now considered clinically obese!
My fellow Ranters and Have-Nots… We are seeing history in the making. Not the history we were hoping to make, but perhaps the most incredible collapse in American political history. When it’s all said and done, maybe as soon as four short years from now, history will note it as the biggest fall since the Roman Empire…
The history we were hoping to make continued in Wyoming Saturday where Barack Obama blew out Hillary again. But the headlines are about “re-do’s” in Michigan and… YIKES… Florida (of all places), and Howard Dean’s perplexing decision of how to make both Hillary and Barack supporters “happy” with the workaround for the corner the Dems have painted themselves into.
They made rules. Michigan and Florida thought they were above the rules and rolled the dice. The bylaws said they relinquish their delegates. In actuality, since both states vote favors Hillary, the Democrats will end up playing right into the GOP’s hand: giving Hillary another reason to hang around, spilt the Democrats even further, and perhaps she even eeks out a victory.
It‘s already clear that the GOP knows they can beat Hillary. Though not admitting it publicly, they‘re also reasonably sure they can‘t stop “The Force that is Obama”. But thanks to Ohio and Texas registering GOP voters that McCain didn't need, they gave McCain what he did need: a reason to keep Hillary in the race. If somehow she pushes Barack in all the remaining primaries, get Florida and Michigan re-do's (where she won handedly with Barack not even on the ballot in Michigan), she has a glimmer of hope. Meanwhile, Howard Dean scratches his ass for a solution.
"It is not those who vote that count, but those who count the votes."--- Joseph Stalin
Today should mark the end of a primary election season that‘s already too long. The end, that is, if the polls are correct. (Which is a joke, because not even the results have been correct to this point!) It’s hard to say what “poll plots” will unfold today with Northern Ohio under a snow and ice storm, while Dallas and South Texas get pummeled with thunderheads. Sounds to me like a lot of cold, wet, pissed-off people standing in line for hours, in what could end up being a futile effort to make their voice heard. Who knows?… Nor will we ever know what makes our “democratic” elections such a subversive process.
But IF the polls can be trusted, we find that Hillary can win Ohio by 9%, or lose by 1%… depending on whose poll you believe. In Texas, Hillary could win by 6% or lose by 2%. The other state and a half, Vermont and Rhode Island, would only matter if Hillary can win both ends of the big doubleheader by a good two-digit margin… Which the Big Bad Obama Machine is not likely to let happen.
Despite a primary season that feels like it started back in November, 2006, if Hillary is the true “team player” she claims to be, and cares at all about the future of this country...
Now that the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Clinton Campaign, Barack “Hussein” Obama (as a-hole talk radio stiff Bill Cunningham from Cincinnati called him while introducing McCain in Ohio today), Captain Kangaroo, Oprah, FDR, and everybody else left-of-center have been blamed for the “leak” of John McCain‘s Wild Oats Era, it’s time for the more diligent pundits, like yours truly, to get to the “heart of the matter”. I can’t believe that I am the first (and only as far as I know) to recognize the cheap smell of Aqua Velva in this whole NY Times “charade”. If it smells like a Rove, walks like a Rove, and quacks like a Rove…by God, it’s got to be a Rove!
Ol’ Squarejaw McCain, his campaign staff, and 59 lobbyist cronies can scream bloody “hit piece” but those of us who have followed politics with any grain of logic (an oxymoron?) sense that Karl the “Hit Man” Rove’s grimy fingerprints are all over this one.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past week, or are among the “undecided voters” in this upcoming election (which is about the same thing), you know about the New York Times printing of a so-called “unsourced” piece saying that, in 2000 McCain had what some aides supposedly regarded as a romance with a female lobbyist skank.
What I find most interesting is the fact that this tidbit of information has been sitting in the desk drawers of MANY New York Times journalists since last December. But somehow, magically, The Times has shown extraordinary restraint from putting the story in print! We all know how well journalists and reporters are at keeping “mum” on anything involving controversy.
As the labor unions stand side by side with college students chanting, “Yes we Can!” the farmers stand next to the environmentalists cheering his name. Disabled Veterans prop up against the IVAW groups holding their American flags with pride again. Anti-war groups, now over 70% of public sentiment, shout, “It’s about time!”. White women have defected to his camp to poll almost dead even with… his white woman opponent. MoveOn.org, the many Veterans organizations, the IVAW, Young Democrats of America, Hollywood, college campuses all over America, inner city community organizations, the Teamsters and other large labor unions, even large Evangelical groups have now embraced his message… an overwhelmingly number of optimistic, caring, trusting, hard-working, economically-oppressed, Americans have hooked up with an overwhelming number of educated, hopeful, connected, technology-savvy, high-energy, big-thinking, dreamers… The result: The Re-Making of America.
Barack barely eluded to Hillary in his victory speech in Wisconsin. He briefly extended the olive branch in a subtle attempt to begin uniting the party for the big task at hand, but he was soft and not derisive about it. The Republican Spin Trust is having anxiety attacks about the prospects of facing the storm that is Obamamania.
The Neo-Cons were pretty smug when all the polls pointed to Hillary being the Democratic front runner. They were confident they could beat the Clintons this time. They were drooling for a re-match of the one that saw Bill unseat Papa Bush back in ‘92. They know the Clinton’s vulnerable spots, hot buttons, when to push them to get the predictable reaction, their Achilles heel… everything about them. But something strange happened on the way to Karl Rove’s Way Back Machine: Obamamania....
As if we didn't already know that Florida represents the bottom rung of America's moral fiber... I mean what with boot camps that torture and even kill underage youth...a state that continually turns its heads on all the reported child abuse cases at one Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Mirianna… election officials that allow votes, then, entire Presidential elections to be quaffed ... Senators like Kathryn Harris who sell out their own electorate to the Bush Crime Family...Representatives like Mark Foley who... well, you know... an ex-Governor related to biggest war criminal since The Fuhrer himself... and the one who replaced him a foot soldier in the Bush propaganda army!
Now there's THIS. I swear if you keep this crap up, Florida, we're just going to have to sell you to Cuba. That'll cure two problems: It'll a) pay down some of the national debt your ex-Governor's stupid brother has run up, and b) State officials will fit right in with the Castro regime. No transitional period even required!
Former spokesperson for Florida's State Child Welfare Agency, 41 year-old Al Zimmerman, paid two 16 yr-old boys for sexually explicit photos of themselves... then brokered the sick pics to an international child pornography ring, according to a complaint filed in Tampa by federal prosecutors!!!
Holy $%#%$, Florida! We already know you don't filter out crooks among your election board officials, your juvenile court judges, youth correction officers, and prison camps… eeerrr…”boot camps” …but the agency in charge of children’s welfare?...
There I was… watching what I thought was an extended half time for a Super Bowl that I wasn’t aware was even being played… corporate America was racking up big-dollar wins just like the Giants-Patriots game…except no Tom Petty. Then I see Electro-Man from Arnold’s movie The Running Man out there funking with Kanye… who celebrated his four wins by being pissed off that he came away with the silver medal again for Album of the Year.. And not getting eulogy time for Mama at $250,000 a minute!
Got to be halftime…There’s Justin!! Hey, where’s Janet? I know… They’re going to bring Brittany out to do an encore of her MTV shtick with Justin... "Yeah, that's the ticket..." (to rip-off Jon Lovitz.) He’ll rip her clothes off... a Hallmark Moment: Justin and Brittany's REUNION... brought to you by... RITE-AID...
How about another one of those fresh Ashley Simpson lip synch numbers? God, is that Ringo? Dude, you look horrible! Mix in some vegetables or sunshine, or hair or something, Mr. Starkey. You’re one of the lone legacies to music royalty,…You're not supposed to remind people of Rob Reiner! If you’re going to represent The Beatles, on international TV, you’ve got to mix in some Grecian formula, dude. That was un-watchable!
Just when you think you’ve heard it all… you find out there’s a whole contingent of intellectually-challenged fascists that you never even knew existed. Unfortunately, today I stumbled across a group that one would think were sterilized shortly after the abolition of debtor’s prison.
My research on this group of Nit-Wits suggests they are to politics what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is to religion: The Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC to those that need to get out of town quicker than time allows to say their whole goofy name. Until now, Dubya has kept his distance from this political equivalent to the KKK, sending only a "videotaped greeting" to address this premiere gathering of the “conservative movement“. BTW… Isn’t that somewhat of an oxymoron? Conservative “movement”? I am at a loss to explain how this group, dead set on “status quo forever”, could be called a “movement”… A Conservative “stagnation” would seem more appropriate, don’t you think?
But now the conservative faction of the GOP must convince themselves, and each other, that John McCain can become a Conservative (although McCain insist he already is... FALSE. He's just a more aggressive warmongering moderate with nothing in common with the type of people that are at this thing. To many of them here, McCain is just another POW with post-traumatic stress disorder.., but with Romney out, now they're stuck....
