The Rude Pundit

2012-01-27T12:42:00.005-05:00

A Thousand Words Regarding Last Night's Debate Including, But By No Means Limited To, Its Effect on the Florida Primary and the Republican Nomination for President in General:

2012-01-26T10:08:00.002-05:00

Your State Sucks: Arizona Is Filthy with Assholes:
So it was that Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona (motto: "We'll shoot your Democratic ass right out of the Congress") and ill-prepared debater, met President Barack Obama on the tarmac at the Phoenix Airport after Air Force One landed. Instead of greeting him with a gift basket of iguana jerky, cactus liquor, and rocks with googly-eyes on them, as is the custom there, Brewer handed Obama a handwritten letter that she said was about immigration policy. One might imagine the crayon-scrawled note says something like "Mexicans is bad, except for tacos. Help us get rid of Mexicans, but leave the tacos. Give us money?" At the bottom, there were probably "yes" and "no" boxes for Obama to check.

Brewer also asked for a meeting with Obama, and she invited him to return to the state when his schedule allowed. The President apparently mentioned that her description of a previous meeting in her book Scorpions for Breakfast was, to paraphrase, kind of cunty. This made for a tense face-off between Brewer and Obama, where the Governor probably said, "I write good. Sarah Palin said so," with Brewer thrusting her finger at the President, which should have made the Secret Service tackle her and drag her off to Gitmo, until Obama, realizing that talking to a crazy person was a waste of time, walked away from Brewer as she was in mid-sentence.

And what exactly did Brewer write that seemed to bear mentioning by the President? Well, we'll never know the trigger, but Brewer's book reads like it was ghostwritten by Sean Hannity while he was taking a dump, so it's filled with the usual nonsensical, huffy, snarky, insulting asides that conservative "writers" seem to think bring depth to a topic. Here's a hint to politicians: Leave that shit to idiot bloggers.

So not only did Brewer describe Obama as "patronizing" in the 2010 Oval Office discussion, not only did she say that, in their talk about immigration policy, "It was though President Obama thought he could lecture me, and I would learn at his knee," but Brewer dissed the Secret Service and the security measures around the Oval Office, where, you know, the President works:

"When we got to the White House, we were sent to a holding room outside the Oval Office. One of my staffers took pictures. This was apparently a no-no. The Secret Service confiscated all of our cell phones and cameras. Too bad we weren't illegal aliens, or we could have sued them."

You got that? Brewer, who, in the name of security, wants her state's cops to be able, on a whim, to ask you to prove you're a citizen or you'll get thrown in jail until you can, is mocking what's done for the safety of the President. And she's pissing on the people who enforce those laws because they briefly inconvenienced her and her staff. Whether or not that's what Obama was reacting to, fuck her. Here's another tip: Don't write books like that until you're no longer governor.

What really happened on the tarmac? Brewer probably invited Obama to meet, Obama probably said something sarcastic about how it might end up in another book, Brewer probably went off, and Obama probably thought "Fuck this" and walked away. And it's not outside the realm of possibility that Brewer was surprised to hear what was in "her" book. Because she's a dolt.

Why was Obama even stepping foot in Arizona? He was there to visit a massive new Intel semiconductor manufacturing plant that's being built in Chandler. Anticipating what Obama might say about the factory, Vice Mayor Jeff Weninger went on the insidious Twitter machine to say, "So @BarackObama is coming 2 @intel in chandler on Wed 2 take credit 4 a 1000 new #jobs & a 5 billion $ investment that he had 0% to do with." If you decode that, it seems that Weninger is mad that the President might say he's personally responsible for single-handedly building the joint. Also, buried deep within the code is the phrase "And I really am just a total asshole, like all elected Republicans in Arizona."

Weninger might have had a point if he hadn't been completely wrong. President Obama was there to give all props to Intel: "Let’s stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas. Let’s reward companies like Intel that are investing and creating jobs right here in the United States of America," he said. "I want to thank Intel for leading the way, because they're investing in startups, they're supporting science and math education, they're helping to train new engineers." Yep. Obama was there to praise a corporation for creating jobs in the United States, in Arizona, in Chandler, rather than sending them to death camps in China.

Oh, by the way, just to make Weninger that much more of an ignorant, knee-jerk, right-wing dickbag, he sent tweets to Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and Newt Gingrich informing them of Obama's egotistical intent: "Pres coming 2 Chandler AZ 2take credit 4 jobs that a conserv city council& a republican state leg got done." Someone was angling for a big-time Fox "news" or radio appearance. Which, ironically enough, would only be possible because of Barack Obama.

2012-01-25T11:01:00.002-05:00

The State of the Union Is "Can We Just Start the Campaign Already?" (Random Observations):
President Obama's State of the Union speech last night (aka "Shit What I'm Proposin' That You Bastards Ain't Gonna Pass") was fine, dull, whatever. But a few things stuck in the Rude Pundit's craw and brain that he didn't really discuss while he was a-tweetin' it.

1. The use of the Osama bin Laden raid and killing as an analogy for how Republicans and Democrats can come together for a common purpose was just really weird. At first, it seemed like Obama was going to give his most obvious foreign policy achievement a subtle, almost in-passing reference at the top of the speech. But at the end, he dove in head first: "Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation Room, when I sat next to Bob Gates -- a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary -- and Hillary Clinton -- a woman who ran against me for president. All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics." How does this transform into tax policy or immigration reform? It's something about getting each other's backs or being stitched together human centipede-style or something. It was hard to tell, really. And coming from the President who regularly orders murder without trial, it probably might have been better to just toss bin Laden's rotting head in John McCain's lap and say, "That's what you get when you're not afraid to go into Pakistan, bitch."

2. But the positive outweighed the negative (a sentence that ought to be the Obama campaign slogan) in the speech. He seemed to indicate he was going to go after a couple of people in the financial industry. He said he was going to do some green stuff. He made a pitch for infrastructure spending. He said the word "unionized." He made another pitch (albeit with less commitment) for more bipartisanship. He didn't come at Republicans nearly as hard as he could have, although he did call out their rhetoric, as he has before, and he did say that they were big fucking hypocrites: "Even my Republican friends who complain the most about government spending have supported federally financed roads, and clean energy projects, and federal offices for the folks back home."

3. The thing that Obama does best, when he's not in "Fired up, ready to go" mode, is to present himself as this eminently calm and reasonable guy who is pretty much the polar opposite of the caricature that is tossed around by Republicans and the right-wing media every day. The speech was for the fence-sitters and for people who may not like Obama (primarily because they don't hear about the reality of what he's doing) but think the GOP is wacky. You'd have to be pretty nutzoid conservative, like licking-Gingrich's-taint crazy, to think that the rational man speaking of how make moderate changes to the tax code to save the economy is the Bolshevik Kenyan cartoon monster who is forcing people to take his goddamn food stamps and act European or risk being put in Sharia law concentration camps. Of course, Gingrich's taint is probably pretty clean these days.

4. Ultimately, what President Obama did last night was give a template for his campaign for reelection. And you can see that, in taking on Mitt Romney (which he will), all he needs to do is keep emphasizing that rich fucks can afford to pay more. He also spoke in a squishy, non-committal way about being open to war with Iran and being willing to negotiate on Medicare and Medicaid spending, leaving himself plenty of wiggle room. In other words, other than taxes, immigration, and a few other domestic issues, he's leaving Republicans with precious, precious little to run on.

5. Regarding creepy ass Mitch Daniels, staring at us like a mellow version of the screaming dude from the Munch painting, and his Republican response, the Rude Pundit didn't know what country he was talking about. When he said that "The late Steve Jobs -- what a fitting name he had -- created more [jobs] than all those stimulus dollars the president borrowed and blew," it wasn't just notable for the dumbass aside. No, it was an outright lie, by a factor of 20. And what the hell does "We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves" mean? "Soon-to-have" sounds like a guarantee of economic comfort and stability. The only way you can do that is with, you know, socialism.

2012-01-24T09:55:00.004-05:00

Newt Gingrich: It Depends on What the Meaning of "Lobbyist" Is:
Here's a September 19, 2007 UPI headline: "Gingrich lobbies for health insurance plan." The first line of the article: "Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich Wednesday lobbied Congress to support a health insurance measure he said would aid children." UPI was never asked to retract the story.

The only moment worth a damn in last night's endless, dull, repetitive, pathetic, bullshit debate in Tampa, Florida, was when Mitt Romney finally put down the juice box, grabbed a bottle of caffeine-free root beer, and went at Newt Gingrich like he wanted to start a bar fight. Gingrich kept insisting that he was not a lobbyist. That may be true in the technical sense that he was never given that title. But if you get paid for fixing people's pipes, you sure as shit are a plumber, even if you're not licensed.

Romney changed it up with the phrase "influence-peddler," attacking Gingrich for his work with the Center for Health Transformation, a "think tank" that Gingrich founded. Gingrich tried to play his tired "I'm just a citizen" routine to respond, but Romney pounced, saying, in essence, "No, you lying shitball, you're not just an ordinary citizen. You're the former Speaker of the House. If Johnny Underwater Homeowner calls up Congressman Dickbag's office, he'll be told to come to a townhall meeting. You dial Dickbag's cell phone directly."

CHT, for instance, has corporate members paying specifically for access to Gingrich. Is that because he's such a fucking genius? Is that worth $200,000 a year in dues? Or is it because he's got access? (By the way, the awesomest membership "benefit" you can have as a CHT member? "Discounts on Gingrich Group workshops and products." That's like saying, "Not only do you have to talk to Newt Gingrich, but he'll punch you in the tit, too.")

It's like they don't even understand what lobbying is, according to this October 22, 2007, Atlanta Journal-Constitution article: "[Wayne] Oliver, the project director in Atlanta, said the center's officials appear before lawmakers or other decision-makers but do not advocate specific legislation. Rather, he said, they expound on 'big ideas' to solve complicated problems. Likewise, he said, meetings that bring together members and public officials are 'solution-driven.'

"'We're really not lobbying,' Oliver said. 'We do play in the political sandbox, if you will, because that's where you can have an impact.'"

That's fucking called "lobbying." Companies that hired Gingrich or his "groups" did because his influence carried weight: "Gingrich's consulting firm, a precursor to the center, had a client, Millennium Plastics, that expected the firm would help it break into the lucrative government contracting business, according to a 2001 news release by the company."

How much more evidence do you want? Howzabout this from 2004, when CHT was started: "'Gingrich's center is a 'brilliantly packaged way of offering his services as former speaker and a man who can open doors to push along what he calls health transformation,' said Joseph Antos, a health policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute. 'In other words, lobbying.'"

But, you know, in a way that avoids scrutiny because of pesky ethics laws. "'He's making more money than he ever thought possible and doesn't have to tell everybody where it's coming from,' marveled former adviser Rich Galen. 'He has the amount of influence he chooses to have. I suspect there is virtually no one in this town of either party who will not take a call from Newt Gingrich, if only to hear what he has to say.'"

Everyone knows it's lobbying. And why does that matter? Because that means that Gingrich is a bought and paid for corporate whore. He's just one of those chatty whores who wants to talk about his kids before he sucks your cock. You listen only because he sucks it so good.

It was essentially a money fight on the stage in Tampa last night. The really rich fuck versus the really, really rich fuck. But, and the Rude Pundit's not proud about this, Romney landing a blow that actually rattled Gingrich gave him a momentary thrill, a bit of wood, even. It was fleeting, yes, but goddamn, it's sweet to see someone punch that white-domed phlegm globule right in his cash sack.

Oh, one last thing: Here's how the crazy conservative Weekly Standard mocked Gingrich's launching of the Committee for New American Leadership back on January 31, 2000: "Yet another anti-Beltway K Street lobby group run by people who've lived in Washington for 25 years." Everyone knows what Gingrich has been doing for the last dozen years. He doesn't even bother to wipe the semen off his upper lip.

2012-01-23T11:10:00.002-05:00

Gingrich Wins South Carolina as the GOP Embraces the Devil:
You want to know what a lying shitsack Newt Gingrich is? It's easy. Choose anything that he repeatedly asserts and look at the truth. Chances are that he's bending the truth. Chances are better that he's just outright lying to your face.

For instance, here's something that Gingrich said to David Gregory on NBC's Meet the Wimpy Press, a line that he repeats whenever anyone dares to ask him about his time working for despised government-backed mortgage bank Freddie Mac: "David, you know better than that. I was not a lobbyist, I was never a lobbyist, I never did any lobbying. Don't try to mix these things up. The fact is I was an adviser strategically and if you look at the only thing ever published by Freddie Mac I said, 'You need more regulations.' If you look at the only article ever written about my talking to the Congress it was in The New York Times in July of 2008 and I said, 'Do not give them any money.'" He said pretty much the exact same thing in the last debate.

See, here's the thing: No, officially, Gingrich was not a registered lobbyist. He was hired by Freddie Mac in 1999 as a "consultant" for his expertise in dealing with Congress. The only reason Gingrich was not a lobbyist is that the law actually prevented him from being one. Here's how AP described Gingrich's role in 2008: "Gingrich talked and wrote about what he saw as the benefits of the Freddie Mac business model." He was hired, with other conservatives, in order to push back against any regulation that might end up "scaling back" Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as they were being hit by the subprime mortgage crisis. In other words, Gingrich wasn't a lobbyist by title. He just wrote about and talked to members of Congress about what Freddie Mac needed. That's like the difference between apples and...ummm...smaller apples?

Gingrich's other claim there, that New York Times article? Yeah, that's a lie. The article he's referring to is from July 26, 2008. It's about why congressional Republicans voted against the bank bailout, even though it was going to pass. The bottom line: it was a politically easy decision. And who helped them see it was a politically easy decision? "Former Speaker Newt Gingrich spoke at a private party meeting before the vote and joined Mr. Boehner in encouraging Republicans to oppose the measure." You got that? That line he quotes, "Do not give them any money"? Nowhere in the article. Gingrich was advising members of Congress how they could be weasels and not actually displease their banking masters.

The thing about the Devil is that he tells his lies with such utter confidence that the unquestioning listener hears them as truth. And the Devil wins when his lies begin to supplant the truth until there is nothing but lies left.

The idea that Newt Gingrich is positioning himself as some kind of Washington outsider is so laughable that it's pathetic. He has physically lived in the DC area for over 30 years. That meeting with members of Congress in 2008 wasn't some kind of anomaly: it's what he's been doing since he was whipped out of Congress by the members of his own party, not by Democrats, not by the elite media he so derides and uses as a safe foil for his own arrogance. The idea that a multimillionaire can position himself as the poor man against Romney is mind-boggling. The idea that he can keep berating the press without anyone in the press calling him on it is just depressing.

Gingrich is like a pimple you get on your forehead that you can't get rid of it. Sure, you can squeeze it, you can put creams on it, you can try alcohol or toothpaste or warm or cold compresses, but that fucker just won't go away. And it just gets bigger so that every time you look in the mirror, it's the only thing you see. You are your zit.

There's gonna be a war in the GOP between the Tea Party monster that was cravenly embraced and co-opted by the right and the old school Republicans, who just want their satisfactory corporate lackey who is easily controlled to be the nominee. It's more than likely going to be a civil war, with southern states going Gingrich and northern ones going Romney, thus making it an insurgency by evangelicals, people who have given a pass to the serial adulterer, but won't vote for a Mormon because it sounds almost like "Muslim." They wouldn't know the real Devil if he stabbed them in the ass with his pitchfork. If Gingrich wins Florida, it's gonna be wonderfully messy. (And if he gave a shit about Romney as a human being, the Rude Pundit would be advising him, "Dude, just tell everyone 'Kiss my rich white ass' and go home.")

The whole thing is chaos now. And having been a Democrat his entire adult life, so used to political chaos, the Rude Pundit can only sit back and enjoy watching Republicans tear themselves asunder.

In his victory speech on Saturday night, Gingrich continued with the lies, his ego inflated like a hot air balloon that's about to go up where the loss of pressure will make it collapse. He will fall again. It is natural. That's what the Devil must do.

2012-01-23T09:07:00.002-05:00

Hey, Stephanie Miller Show Listeners, Order the Book:
Show the bastards at OR Books that they can't hold back the 2012 Rude Pundit's Almanack. We gotta get to 500 bought in the next month or so (and we're well on the way). Order it for the eBook (that's just ten bucks, fer chrissake) or, you know, the paper one.

2012-01-20T09:36:00.004-05:00

Moments in the Life of Newt Gingrich from the 1990s:
On September 8, 1995, then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told a crowd of 4,000 believers at the Christian Coalition's "Road to Victory" conference in Washington, D.C. that he "got married when I was very young. And we have two wonderful daughters by that marriage. And I got divorced. Later on, I got remarried. And we have a marriage which has a fair amount of stress, and it's difficult. And I think that's fairly typical of a lot of families. It takes a lot of work, a lot of prayer."

The "stress" he was talking about was that, for two years, he had been putting his penis into the vagina and possibly the mouth and anus of Callista Bisek, a woman who is 23 years younger than him and 14 years younger than his then-wife Marianne.

Gingrich continued, justifying his sexual betrayal as fitting in perfectly with one way of looking at family values. He told his daughters that "we know precisely because it's been hard why you should emphasize family values. Because even when you're emphasizing them, it's hard."

The audience, who by then must have known the whispers about Gingrich's relationship with Bisek, which had been swirling, applauded and cheered. Ralph Reed, head of the Christian Coalition, later said, "[O]ur members are not looking for someone who is perfect...They are looking for someone who will stand up for what they believe in."

The audience also knew that a British woman had said she had given him a blow job during his first marriage, back in 1976. If you ever wanted to know why Gingrich didn't run for president before, it's because he needed plausible distance from his affairs as a demonstration of his redemption.

In talking about marriage, Gingrich told the gathered Christians, "I start with the premise that all of us are sinful and that's why we need to seek salvation through faith because we're never going to earn it because we're inadequate." See, when it comes to marriage, the Rude Pundit starts with the premise that, if you're a man and you get married, you shouldn't be shoving your dick in the orifices of others, especially if you asked your wife for an open marriage so you could do so without a scintilla of conscience and she said, "No." But he's old-fashioned that way.

That's the brilliance of Gingrich, by the way, shining even brighter than the delusional hypocrisy of anyone who ever bought the "family values" bullshit lie. See, where others heard "marriage" and "family values" and thought, "Oh, he means 'fidelity' and 'being good to kids,'" what Gingrich really meant was "Families and marriages are fucked up and, boy, so am I." Really, the entire course of the 1990s would have been changed if the right had been clear on that.

And that doesn't even get into the Clinton impeachment matter, where Gingrich was actually as smart as possible and refused to talk about it as being about sex precisely because everyone knew it was about sex. He demanded that no one in the House Republican caucus speak about it in terms other than as "obstruction of justice." Still, everyone knew it was about hummers in the Oval Office and jizz on a dress.

But also, back in the 1990s, Gingrich used to rail against the "liberal elite media" who he believed sought to downplay President Clinton's transgressions.

So when Gingrich went all angry chimp on CNN's John King at last night's GOP South Carolina debate over a question about Marianne Gingrich's interview with ABC, it wasn't only unexpected. It's what he does. He's always the victim. When he said, "I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans," you could have put Bill Clinton in there.

Oh, wait. Here's Gingrich in June 1996 in the Washington Times: "[T]here is no president in modern times more systematically protected by the elite media." (Indeed, one could go through much of the way Gingrich has attacked Obama and find almost verbatim antecedents in his attacks on Clinton, Gore, and Kerry.)

In December 1994, Gingrich was congratulating the House Republicans for their victory in the midterms. After talking about his family, he said, "I want to ask all of you to join me in -- (pauses) -- I'm trying to think. It's a little difficult to say. In thanking the person who has endured more from the media and more from the process than anybody should have to for me to be here, my wife Marianne." Callista Bisek, who was a House staffer, was probably there for that rally. Maybe she was a little uncomfortable as Gingrich introduced his wife since the Speaker had been fucking Callista for a year already.

No, there's no issue about a sociopathic character flaw here that might be of interest to the voters.

2012-01-19T17:27:00.003-05:00

The Rude Pundit on Monday's Stephanie Miller Show:
The Rude Pundit and Stephanie Miller said all kinds of mean things about Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, but especially Mitt Romney:

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2012-01-19T12:18:00.004-05:00

Random Thoughts on the Latest From the GOP Primary Season:
1. Marianne Gingrich's interview with ABC News, revealing, among other things, that Newt wanted an open marriage so he could bang Callista and not suffer any political or financial consequences, won't matter. Nor will her re-assertion that Newt left her shortly after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Because Newt Gingrich voters are divided between two groups: the Who-Gives-a-Fuck group and the Jesus-Forgave-Him-So-Can-I group. The former group's members are so deluded that they will tell you that the Clinton impeachment was about perjury. The latter group's members are so desperate for a candidate that, as long as he said he believes he's made peace with God, they wouldn't care if Newt had strangled his second wife with his first wife's intestines.

2. When Rick Perry first announced that he was running for President, do you remember how people were saying on the left and right that the nomination race, if not the whole election, was over? That a masterful manly man politician like Rick Perry, a George W. Bush who could ride a horse (yet, bizarrely, both were college cheerleaders), would fuck the asses of every other candidate like a horny hillbilly in a room of Ned Beattys? Yeah, that was awesome. Honestly, who'd've thought that Bush would turn out to be the articulate governor from Texas. The phrase "epic fail" gets tossed around and used too much, but in terms of success versus expectations, it's more than appropriate here.

3. Rick Perry endorsing Newt Gingrich was a no-brainer. After all, you can bet that Gingrich has an open marriage with Callista, so the man-love can be fulfilled. The real fun developing now is watching how visceral the hate for Romney is among the movement conservatives. For Perry and Gingrich, this shit is personal. Romney made Perry his bitch in the debates. And Romney's SuperPAC has been tearing into Gingrich with a savagery that Obama's ad people better be taking notes on. They want to destroy the fancier-pants Mormon who believes he's better than everyone else.

4. Oh, hey, looks like wee little Ricky Santorum might have won Iowa. And? The real story is that eight precincts lost their votes and can never be recounted. If that had happened during a Democratic caucus, Fox "news" would already be screeching about voter fraud and produced scary black people who did it.

5. So, just to get this straight, Mitt Romney says he paid his taxes at a 15% rate, which is the capital gains tax. And Newt Gingrich is running on eliminating the capital gains tax (with Romney running on some reductions). So they are both running for president to make themselves richer.

Christ. Just take your Romney pill already, GOP. You deserve nothing less and nothing more.

2012-01-19T11:59:00.002-05:00

Late Post Today:
Just waking up from a SOPA/PIPA blackout. Back in a bit with more justifiable rudeness.

2012-01-18T10:16:00.002-05:00

No SOPA/PIPA Blackout Here, But Christopher Dodd Is a Goddamned Tool:
The Rude Pundit didn't go dark to protest the Stop Online Piracy and the Protect IP Acts because, well, it just seemed like a lazy way to avoid blogging for a day. Go read about the acts, if you haven't, because it's pretty insidious stuff, not just because of the governmental control, but because of the corporate power behind it.

Besides, why go dark when you can point out something stupid said by the most powerful lobbyist supporting the bills? Former Senator Chris Dodd, now head of the Motion Picture Association of America (motto: "You can only be our leader if you're a male with a full head of white hair"), issued a statement attacking the websites that are participating in today's strike/blackout. It says, in part, "It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests."

You got that? The whore who fronts for an industry owned by multinational megacorporations like NewsCorp, Sony, and Viacom is actually attacking BoingBoing.net owners Happy Mutants LLC for using the internet for some evil agenda to steal Chipmunk movies just because they went on a one-day strike. That's a bit like Ted Bundy accusing a student nurse of having a messy dorm room just before bludgeoning her to death.

Here's the deal, entertainment industry: your old model for making money is dying, and you haven't figured out how to deal with it yet. You're still in the Anger phase when you need to move on to Acceptance. It sucks, yeah, but right now you're the brontosaurus in the room, and the little critters that don't need so much to survive are evolving and changing. Sure, you can stomp all the monkeys and aardvarks and panthers you want, but eventually you're just gonna keel over and die.

When he appeared on a panel on the future of book publishing at the Words and Music festival in New Orleans in November, the Rude Pundit told the audience that we haven't yet figured out how to adapt to new technology. "We're the missing link," he said. "We're the mutation that won't survive but is necessary to evolution."

In other words, instead of trying to rage against a future that one can't stop without resorting to draconian measures that will eventually fail, the MPAA and the RIAA and other "trade organizations" better spend more time figuring out how to co-opt and use the constant stream of innovation in digital entertainment delivery instead of wasting time suing and shutting down and lobbying. Even if it puts douchebags like Chris Dodd out of a job.

2012-01-17T10:54:00.003-05:00

Newt Gingrich's Inner Redneck Appears:
There wasn't a safe goat ass anywhere in eastern South Carolina last night. After the Republican presidential debate in Myrtle Beach, the whooping, hooting, cheering white people, whipped into a frenzied state by the race-baiting rhetoric of Newt Gingrich, headed out to the backyards and barns of the Gamecock state to take out their throbbing desires on goats, fucking the goats from behind, getting ass-reamed by the goats, the women glazed by goat semen, the men plastered with goat shit on their dicks, none of them caring because, with Newt leading them against that uppity nigger, Juan Williams, the evening's surrogate Obama, the South would rise again, so they may as well do what they do best: wallow around naked in a mud pit, coated with goat feces and cum, staring up at the stars, remembering the glory of the evening they had witnessed, the confused goat, feeling both satisfied and violated, heading into a corner to sleep.

The Fox "news"/Wall Street Journal/Murdoch's Taint debate was only notable because of the moment when Newt Gingrich decided to double down on the racism on Martin Luther King Day when questioned by Juan Williams about his remarks on black youths and food stamps, as well as his call for poor kids to become janitors at their high school. When Gingrich refused to modify or sugarcoat what he had said, the audience at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center exploded.

Of course they did. There was a group of crackers, having been forced to go through an entire day hearing about how a great black man fought for the rights of black people so that now, not only do you have to share water fountains with 'em, but you can't even call 'em "boy" at work without someone getting all upset, and, besides, what are you gonna do with all these unburned crosses? And once the cork was off the crowd, it turned viciously on Williams, booing him loudly when he attempted to get Gingrich to explain because "It sounds as if you are seeking to belittle [poor and nonwhite] people."

Watch the video of the event. You can pinpoint the moment that Gingrich saw that he had the audience eating out of his hand like trained pigs lining up at the garbage trough. His hand movements get more forceful. His voice rises. He is surfing the wave of adoration like a California teenager on his board, hitting that sweet spot in the barrel. And he just goes to town with the lies: "[T]he fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history." (Not a fact at all. In fact, it was George W. Bush who is responsible for more people getting on food stamps; oh, and isn't that a good thing so that kids can eat?) "There’s — the area that ought to be I-73 was called by Barack Obama 'a corridor of shame' because of unemployment." (Nope. The "Corridor of Shame" is because of the condition of the rural schools in the area. Oh, and Obama didn't name it that; the people from there did. Oh, and it's along I-95.)

But who the fuck cares if Newt Gingrich is a venal, lying shitsack, an angry hippopotamus destroying anything it can and dragging the half-dead into the river to drown? The audience lapped it up as he jacked off in their faces, using his dick to slap the black guy who dared to question the rightness of his Newtness. He is a walking, talking infection, and every time we think we've gotten rid of him, he comes back stronger and more resistant to the drugs that can kill him.

However, big thanks to the people of South Carolina for revealing, as ever, that racist pricks will always and forever be racist pricks and that redneck assholes will always be easily manipulated into thinking that the rich motherfucker up on stage who calls out the "elitists" is one of them.

(Fun true story: Myrtle Beach is cracker vacation paradise. As the man who was repairing his air conditioner once told the Rude Pundit while living in Tennessee, he loved going to Myrtle Beach because he could drive his pick-up truck on the beach. "It don't get no better than that," he said. Having never driven a pick-up on a beach, the Rude Pundit could neither agree nor disagree.)

2012-01-16T10:14:00.003-05:00

Martin Luther King Would Still Fuck Your Shit Up (99% Edition):
Here's something relevant to our current debate over whether or not it's okay to raise the marginal income tax rate on millionaires by 4%. It's from the sermon "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," delivered at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, on March 31, 1968, after King had finished discussing racial injustice:

"We are challenged to rid our nation and the world of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus, poverty spreads its nagging, prehensile tentacles into hamlets and villages all over our world. Two-thirds of the people of the world go to bed hungry tonight. They are ill-housed; they are ill-nourished; they are shabbily clad. I’ve seen it in Latin America; I’ve seen it in Africa; I’ve seen this poverty in Asia."

King then described a trip that he and his wife took to India, coming to the conclusion that "maybe we spend far too much of our national budget establishing military bases around the world rather than bases of genuine concern and understanding."

He continued, "Not only do we see poverty abroad, I would remind you that in our own nation there are about forty million people who are poverty-stricken. I have seen them here and there. I have seen them in the ghettos of the North; I have seen them in the rural areas of the South; I have seen them in Appalachia. I have just been in the process of touring many areas of our country and I must confess that in some situations I have literally found myself crying.

"I was in Marks, Mississippi, the other day, which is in Whitman County, the poorest county in the United States. I tell you, I saw hundreds of little black boys and black girls walking the streets with no shoes to wear. I saw their mothers and fathers trying to carry on a little Head Start program, but they had no money. The federal government hadn’t funded them, but they were trying to carry on. They raised a little money here and there; trying to get a little food to feed the children; trying to teach them a little something.

"And I saw mothers and fathers who said to me not only were they unemployed, they didn’t get any kind of income—no old-age pension, no welfare check, no anything. I said, 'How do you live?' And they say, 'Well, we go around, go around to the neighbors and ask them for a little something. When the berry season comes, we pick berries. When the rabbit season comes, we hunt and catch a few rabbits. And that’s about it.'

"And I was in Newark and Harlem just this week. And I walked into the homes of welfare mothers. I saw them in conditions—no, not with wall-to-wall carpet, but wall-to-wall rats and roaches. I stood in an apartment and this welfare mother said to me, 'The landlord will not repair this place. I’ve been here two years and he hasn’t made a single repair.' She pointed out the walls with all the ceiling falling through. She showed me the holes where the rats came in. She said night after night we have to stay awake to keep the rats and roaches from getting to the children. I said, 'How much do you pay for this apartment?' She said, 'A hundred and twenty-five dollars.' I looked, and I thought, and said to myself, 'It isn’t worth sixty dollars.' Poor people are forced to pay more for less. Living in conditions day in and day out where the whole area is constantly drained without being replenished. It becomes a kind of domestic colony. And the tragedy is, so often these forty million people are invisible because America is so affluent, so rich. Because our expressways carry us from the ghetto, we don’t see the poor.

"Jesus told a parable one day, and he reminded us that a man went to hell because he didn’t see the poor. His name was Dives. He was a rich man. And there was a man by the name of Lazarus who was a poor man, but not only was he poor, he was sick. Sores were all over his body, and he was so weak that he could hardly move. But he managed to get to the gate of Dives every day, wanting just to have the crumbs that would fall from his table. And Dives did nothing about it. And the parable ends saying, 'Dives went to hell, and there were a fixed gulf now between Lazarus and Dives.'

"There is nothing in that parable that said Dives went to hell because he was rich. Jesus never made a universal indictment against all wealth. It is true that one day a rich young ruler came to him, and he advised him to sell all, but in that instance Jesus was prescribing individual surgery and not setting forth a universal diagnosis. And if you will look at that parable with all of its symbolism, you will remember that a conversation took place between heaven and hell, and on the other end of that long-distance call between heaven and hell was Abraham in heaven talking to Dives in hell.

"Now Abraham was a very rich man. If you go back to the Old Testament, you see that he was the richest man of his day, so it was not a rich man in hell talking with a poor man in heaven; it was a little millionaire in hell talking with a multimillionaire in heaven. Dives didn’t go to hell because he was rich; Dives didn’t realize that his wealth was his opportunity. It was his opportunity to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother Lazarus. Dives went to hell because he was passed by Lazarus every day and he never really saw him. He went to hell because he allowed his brother to become invisible. Dives went to hell because he maximized the minimum and minimized the maximum. Indeed, Dives went to hell because he sought to be a conscientious objector in the war against poverty.

"And this can happen to America, the richest nation in the world — and nothing’s wrong with that — this is America’s opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will."

That this sermon could be delivered today, 44 years later, with some adjustments for inflation and with "billionaire" in there, speaks to a shame that should scar us as deeply as any mark of Cain. That it doesn't and that we speak of helping the poor with the crumbs that fall from the table of the rich as "wealth redistribution," as if that's wrong and evil, demonstrates that we are, indeed, damned as Dives.

2012-01-13T11:45:00.002-05:00

Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Smoke a Poisoned Cigar:

Yes, that is Marxist revolutionary/t-shirt glamor boy Che Guevara. Yes, that is a Mercedes-Benz symbol on his beret. Yes, that is a presentation about new cars. Yes, it says, "Viva la Revolucion" up there, as if remodeled Benzes are akin to the overthrow of Batista in Cuba.

There's so many things wrong with that image that it's enough to make your brain explode, no matter what side of the Che worship/condemnation or hero/mass murderer lines you come down on. Daimler, Mercedes' parent company, said that Che was chosen to show "the revolution in automobility enabled by new technologies, in particular those associated with connectivity." Because nothing says, "Hey, cool, my car will tell me if someone liked my Facebook status update" more than the dude who said, "We are fighting against misery, but we are also fighting against alienation." Still, high-priced rolling connectivity fighting alienation aside, are you motherfucking serious? (Oh, and is "automobility" a word now?)

Capitalism eats everything eventually. Even Communists.

2012-01-12T10:15:00.002-05:00

Gitmo Ten Years On: Our Untreated, Open Wound:
Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of the first prisoners arriving at the detention camp at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The fact that the camp still exists to keep 171 detainees in a legal limbo is a stain on our nation. And it matters, desperately so. How can we act outraged and self-righteous about Marines allegedly pissing on Taliban fighter corpses when Gitmo exists? And the Gitmo-ization of our entire legal system continues, with the barest outrage at the militarization of local police forces. Over at Guantanamo Bay, as reported in the Washington Post today, the prisoners are still treated as imminent threats. Their written communications with their military lawyers are subject to scrutiny, in violation of attorney-client privilege, and the lawyers, who, again, are members of the military with security clearance, are outraged.

Mostly, though, the United States couldn't give a shit less about Gitmo. But it's an infection that has eaten away at us in ways that we can't even comprehend, ignoring it like a wound that is left untreated.

The Rude Pundit's Almanack includes this takedown of our detention policies (posted here with some revisions and updates):

When it comes to some principles, like those enshrined in things like the Magna Carta or the Constitution, you shouldn’t care who the hell is in the White House. Here’s a basic one: A president should not have the power to detain people without charge. On the left, we screamed like banshees who had stubbed our toes during the Bush administration over the imprisonment without charge or trial of hundreds of people at the Guantánamo Naval Base. But that noise has died down considerably since the election of Barack Obama, even though the policy has not really changed, and, in fact, Obama has embraced most of the imperial presidency powers that Bush got a prone-and-willing Congress to give him. Both presidents want you to believe that they should have such sweeping authority simply because you can trust them.

The Bush administration demonstrated, on a nearly monthly basis, why such trust is about as valuable as the information gotten from nearly every person ever kept at Gitmo:

On January 27, 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney said on ABC’s This Week with Sam Donaldson: “These are bad people. I mean, they’ve already been screened before they get to Guantánamo.”

By October 28, 2002, the first four detainees were released.

On July 17, 2003, in a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President George W. Bush claimed, “[T]he only thing I know for certain is that these are bad people.”

On July 18, 2003, twenty-seven of those bad people were sent back to their home countries.

(You can see the pattern, here, no? It pretty much continued like that, even into the second term of our Bush/Cheney nightmare.)

On June 13, 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney informed Sean Hannity on Fox "news," “The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantánamo are bad people. I mean, these are terrorists for the most part. These are people that were captured in the battlefield of Afghanistan or rounded up as part of the Al Qaeda network. We’ve already screened the detainees there and released a number, sent them back to their home countries. But what’s left is hardcore.”

On July 20, 2005, eight hardcore detainees were released or sent to their home countries.

Even at the end of their years in office, they were insisting that “oh, hey, now it’s just really, really bad awful worst o’ the worstest people that ever walked the earth.”

During a December 15, 2008 interview with Jonathan Karl, Vice President Dick Cheney offered, “Guantánamo has been the repository, if you will, of hundreds of terrorists, or suspected terrorists, that we’ve captured since 9/11. They—many of them, hundreds, have been released back to their home countries. What we have left is the hardcore. Their cases are reviewed on an annual basis to see whether or not they’re still a threat, whether or not they’re still intelligence value in terms of continuing to hold them. But—and we're down now to some 200 being held at Guantánamo. But that includes the core group, the really high-value targets like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.” Despite his self-correction in the first sentence there, he also called them “200 al-Qaeda terrorists” later in the interview.

On December 16, 2008, three al-Qaeda terrorists were sent back to their home countries.

On January 13, 2009, Cheney told radio host and gambling man Bill Bennett, regarding the detainees at Gitmo, “Now what’s left, that is the hardcore.” Which, if you’re paying attention, is almost exactly what he said to Sean Hannity in 2005, which was over a hundred released detainees ago.

On January 17, 2009, six more of the hardcore were sent back to their home countries. That was just a couple of days before Barack Obama was inaugurated, so did they intentionally release criminals just to fuck with the new administration?

After 9/11, the White House fed us this line about the terrible people we held in a place where they couldn’t harm us. Anyone who questioned these actions was called an anti-American terrorist-enabler by the right. Until Hurricane Katrina blew the ski masks off the entire bunch of thugs who ran the country, the mainstream media mostly just went along with the White House line when, right in front of them, was the trickle of released detainees, which demonstrated, conclusively, that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and others were lying. And no one of any authority, like, say, Congress or even just the Democrats, held them to account for it.

Now, not only do we still have Gitmo and Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan but, in Congress, both Democrats and Republicans blocked the closing of Guantanamo by voting to deny funds for that purpose, including any funds for bringing detainees to the United States for trial. If this had been the Bush White House, that would have been seen as something akin to treason for not allowing the Commander-in-Chief to command.

By the way, on May 12, 2009, talking about Gitmo again, Dick Cheney told Fox "news" host Neil Cavuto, “The ones that are remaining, about 245, are the hardcore, the worst of the worst.” At least someone in this world is consistent until the bitter end.

Oh, on May 15, 2009, Lakhdar Boumedienne was freed.

2012-01-11T11:03:00.002-05:00

Mitt Romney, the Dickhead in Full:
There's nothing to talk about regarding last night's New Hampshire primary, just as there will be nothing to talk about in South Carolina, etc. The forced march to Mittdom for the GOP has all the excitement of a line of dutiful Soviet citizens waiting in line for bread back in the day. When the best the news networks could do last night was talk about how amazing it was that Jon Huntsman was in third and then wait breathlessly to see if Gingrich or Santorum came in fourth, then there is truly no story. More than once, on MSNBC, Ed Schultz looked like he was going to blow his brains out just to create some excitement. Over on CNN, the life slowly drained out of John King as he described the variances between Manchester precinct votes until his zombie form kept hitting the video wall repeatedly. And, on Fox "news," Megyn Kelly could barely contain her contempt at having to interview the horrible Sarah Palin puppet that keeps appearing despite the fact that it's now threadbare with one of its button eyes is dangling.

Yeah, yeah, Ron Paul came in 2nd. And?

What the Rude Pundit wants to talk about is the breathtaking dickishness of Mitt Romney, on full, glorious display in his victory speech/acceptance speech preview last night. We've been treated to that barely repressed assholery at the debates, that patrician look of "How dare you" when someone attacked him, the punk-ass need to invoke time rules, the floundering denial of anything other than the utter rightness of his Mittosity, the disgust that these people, some of them barely millionaires, would be allowed even on the same stage as him.

But last night was an even grander display. It was a full-on face fuck of conservative paranoia and lies. His attack on Barack Obama had nothing to do with, you know, Barack Obama, but was instead a deep-throat cock thrust into the mouth of the Republican base's image of Obama: "Yeah, take that chowder, you simpering yahoos. You know you like it. And now lick me clean after 5 years of campaigning."

It would take pages to try to enumerate the number and breadth of lies in Romney's speech, but let's take one: "[Obama] wants to turn America into a European-style social welfare state. We want to insure we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity. This president takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe." First off, why the hating on Europe? The countries that are nose-diving are the ones that got fucked by the same kinds of bullshit investment schemes that fucked the United States. But what part of Europe is he talking about? Because, like, according to the mega-conservative Heritage Foundation's 2011 "Index of Economic Freedom," not only is the United States the ninth most free out of 183 countries, but Ireland, Denmark, and Switzerland are ranked higher. And they provide socialized health care to their citizens (as do all the others ranked higher). So, in other words, we should be so lucky to be like some European nations. But nothing is going to stop Romney from using "Europe" as shorthand for "socialist pussies," so he added at the end, "I want you to remember when our White House reflected the best of who we are, not the worst of what Europe has become."

Romney needs to paint Obama as a radical extremist who "apologizes for America" and is "a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy" because he needs to distract from just how extreme his own ideas are. When Romney says he wants to "repeal Obamacare," he's saying he wants adults under 26 to lose health insurance, if they have it with their parents. He's saying he wants insurance companies to be able to decline you for a pre-existing condition and that caps should be reinstated so that you go bankrupt or die if you get badly sick or injured. His social agenda would break up marriages and families. His tax policy would drive the nation further into debt while he raises the military budget and probably starts a war with Iran.

In other words, everything Mitt Romney wants to do would harm Americans. Everything. So of course he's gotta get out there and be the total dickhead he always was and always will be.

Here's the question someone needs to ask, repeatedly, of Romney: "If you had been elected in 2008, what would you have done to clear the wreckage left behind by George W. Bush?"

2012-01-10T10:54:00.002-05:00

A Brief List of Conservative Men Who Need to Be Punched in the Balls:
1. Fox "news" Radio reporter Todd Starnes, who, waxing patriotic to Sean Hannity about the white people of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, voting in their primary this morning, really said, "I love this, this is what America is all about. Like you said, no hanging chads, we didn’t see any Black Panthers with baseball bats. These were good, American folks going to do their patriotic duty." Remember: Black Panthers are not good Americans. And that toad-faced fuck needs to be socked in the sack. (Side note: "Dixville Notch" sounds like a cute name for "vagina.")

2. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who twists history like a pair of contortionists trying to have sex in a tiny box. In today's version of "No, Really, I'm Not a Smug Elitist Cockmonger," Brooks tries to figure out "Where Are the Liberals?" His answer, strangely, is not that a prolonged period of demonization by the American right, stretching back to at least Reagan, if not Nixon, echoed by the corporate media with little or no actual dissent being allowed a fair hearing for at least three decades (and possible four), gave the self-identifier "liberal" the same connotation as "Communist traitor piece of shit who'll stab Uncle Sam with an American flag and beat Lady Liberty to death with a bald eagle corpse," compounded by a raping of the remnants of liberalism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. No, strangely, Brooks does not mention any of that. Instead, he blames mistrust of the federal government and the way that both Democrats and Republicans work for the benefit of the wealthy, although sometimes for people that average white people don't like. Oddly, Brooks doesn't mention that it was Republicans who worked to turn Americans against believing that the government could make their lives easier and, in doing so, made it so that government could make corporate lives easier, lying that making corporate lives easier makes the average citizen's life easier, thus making the average citizen's life harder and, with the aforementioned demonization of anything even vaguely liberal under the hated (and wrong) banner of socialism, Americans had nowhere to turn but to ignorance, God and guns, don't you know, which is easily manipulated by the aforementioned media and the aforementioned politicians, and that, if Brooks were honest, which he is most emphatically not, he would say that individual liberal beliefs actually poll quite well, but because the only organizing philosophy is hated liberalism, which is...and, oh, hell, it'd just be easier to kick Brooks in the nads and walk away.

3. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who said yesterday that it's snobby to think that all kids should go to college. No, really: "Who are you? Who are you to say that every child in America go...I mean the hubris of this president to think that he knows what’s best for you. I...you know there is...I have seven kids. Maybe they’ll all go to college. But, if one of my kids wants to go and be an auto mechanic, good for him. That’s a good-paying job – using your hands and using your mind. This is the kind of, the kind of snobbery that we see from those who think they know how to run our lives. Rise up America. Defend your own freedoms."

First off, a starting auto mechanic makes around $30,000 a year in New Hampshire, so, hey, Rick Santorum's kids, your Dad wants you to live at less than 1.5 times the poverty level for a family of four (and you will breed, being Rick Santorum's kids).

Second off, what the motherfuck is Santorum talking about? As Charles Blow points out, President Obama has never said that: "The president has consistently framed the discussion as one of making high school graduates both college- and career-ready. And even when speaking about learning after high school, he has often included both higher education and vocational training."

And, third off, when did it stop being the dream of Americans to want their kids to go to school so they could get an education? And how does it require rising up to defend freedom? Wasn't the point of Santorum's "my grandpa was a filthy coal miner" story about how generations of Americans get opportunities because of the work of their parents?

Jesus, on the list of things a conservative could attack Obama on, the hope that children get educated should probably be below "choice of dog breed" and "that weird mole."

2012-01-09T10:50:00.003-05:00

Hey, Media: It's Not About Romney; It's About Money:
On June 13, 2011, the Rude Pundit took to the Twitter machine and tapped out the following: "Christ, do we really have to live through the next 17 months until Obama beats Romney? Do we have to go through this?" The reason he brings this up is not to say that, on a bad day, when he's at the end of a three-day tequila and ecstasy binge, and he's not sure what city he's in, whose vomit is on the pillow, and whether that naked guy in the corner is breathing, he's smarter than every mainstream political prognosticator. True as that might be, that's not the point here (and, hey, he might turn out to be wrong in November [he won't be]). No, there's another reason the Rude Pundit is shamelessly touting his tweet - yeah, he's gonna punch himself in the balls for writing that phrase - and it's got less to do with the candidates than with the mighty media itself.

This morning, on MSNBC's Goatee-Flaunting with Chuck Todd, the significantly bewhiskered host declared former Governor Mitt Romney as the frontrunner by far in the New Hampshire primary and then talked about the battle for second place, sighing, "because we have to make a story about something here" (or words to that effect).

See, it's not that the Rude Pundit was so fucking prescient in his June declaration that he's never wavered from, not when Rick Perry jumped into the race, not when Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul had their surges. It's that everyone has known all along that it was gonna be Romney. Members of the media (and a good many people in Blogsylvania) have kept alive a narrative of competition where none exists, hoping beyond hope that this will become another Obama/Clinton slog through the winter and spring instead of the tedious wait on the inevitable occurring.

In doing so, nearly every reporter has missed the opportunity to cover the real story of this primary (and, truly, of almost every election in this country): the reason that Mitt Romney is winning is because there is no one who can touch him on money. Whether it's campaign contributions or PACs, this nomination process was over before it began because the very, very rich Romney is Wall Street's pick. This is not news. But with the rise of Super PACs in the wake of the Citizens United decision and the no-ceiling spending they can engage in under the guise of "free speech" (remember: if money equals speech, then some people have more speech than others, no?), we've moved into a new realm of crazy. That's news. Big-time fucking news. But it's pathetic when Stephen Colbert is one of the only media figures making the effort to expose how corrupting Super PACs are.

In other words, the real story of this primary process, the first presidential election since Citizens United, has been consciously ignored when, indeed, it is more significant than who Republicans pick to lose to President Obama. On the Meet the Press debate yesterday, host David Gregory came precariously close to making it a real topic. Asking Romney about the tidal wave of Super PAC ads that destroyed Newt Gingrich, Gregory brought up Gingrich's strategy to destroy Romney: "Are you consistent now as you're preparing to launch against Governor Romney?" Gingrich said he was. Gregory asked them, "Would you both agree to take these Super PAC ads down?" They would not agree. Dangerously close to actually talking about something important, Gregory moved on.

A more interesting moment occurred after the debate on MSNBC, when Chris Matthews spoke to Romney lackey John Sununu (who is strangely still alive) over the Super PAC spending. After defending Romney and the ads, Sununu said, "The law should be changed. Everybody, every candidate agrees the law should be changed. Nobody likes that law, but unfortunately, bad legislation put the Supreme Court in a position where [it] had to make that decision." Sununu was referring, of course, to the McCain-Feingold campaign spending law as the "bad legislation." But you got that? Nobody likes the law. But it is the law. And the Super PAC ads are a legal abrogation of an open, fair electoral process. There are others, but it is certainly the most egregious. Like Gregory, Matthews touched on it and backed away.

During the debate, Gingrich pushed Romney: "Governor, I wish you would calmly and directly state it is your former staff running the PAC, it is your millionaire friends giving to the PAC." Romney wouldn't deny it. Gingrich could have used that as a leaping off point to attack the campaign laws and Super PACs, but he couldn't because not only does Gingrich have one supporting him, not only is it about to launch a campaign attacking Romney for being a heartless capitalist (an odd strategy in a Republican primary), but one of Newt Gingrich's billionaire friends just donated $5 million to the pro-Gingrich Super PAC.

Of Republicans, only Buddy Roemer is speaking out against the current campaign finance laws. Roemer has more experience in government than Romney. Of course, he doesn't have the cash. And, of course, almost no one in the media gives a shit what he has to say.

2012-01-07T11:37:00.002-05:00

Buy the Book, Listen to the Podcast, Make It a Rude Weekend:
Hey, look: Emmy-winning Daily Show writer Jo Miller says the 2011 edition of The Rude Pundit's Almanack was "a joy—deeply intelligent, pants-wettingly funny and impossible to put down." There's a good chance that the 2012 edition would make her laugh until she vomits.

But there will only be a 2012 edition, with updates and new material, if rude readers pre-order 500 copies. Ten bucks for the e-book, 17 for the print. From New Yorker-approved publisher OR Books. (Note: No, the Rude Pundit has no idea what a pre-order is. He does know that if you do order, and we don't reach the magic number, you'll get all yer cash or credit card space back.)

So pony up, good people and bad motherfuckers. Order now. You know you wanna read dirty limericks about Herman Cain (teaser: "smirk" rhymes with both "jerk" and "lurk").

Oh, and here's this week's episode of Cheater and the Rude, where Jeff Kreisler keeps making Santorum jokes, much to the Rude Pundit's chagrin, anger, and disgust at the lack of originality.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

2012-01-06T10:49:00.003-05:00

A Scene from Radical Christianity's Ongoing War on Women:

This burnt-out part of a building used to be the American Family Planning Clinic in Pensacola, Florida. Because abortions were performed there, it had been the flashpoint for anti-choice nutzoids for decades, including bombings in 1984 and other violence. Pensacola is also where two doctors who performed abortions were gunned down in the 1990s. In the early hours of 2012, a redneck, criminal homeless puke who should have met the L.A. serial killer tossed a Molotov cocktail at the place and burned it down because he didn't like abortions being done safely.

According to an affidavit in the arrest of Bobby Joe Rogers, the cracker arsonist had been spending time with anti-choice protesters who were regularly chanting, singing, holding signs, and occasionally blocking the way outside the clinic. The actual violence had died down since the shootings. Rogers was influenced by them. By groups devoted to ending a Supreme Court-approved liberty, as allowed by the founding document of our nation. Indeed, one could say of these groups, with little argument, that they hate us for our freedom and wish to impose a radical religious doctrine on the nation.

In other words, Bobby Joe Rogers is as much a terrorist as any mythical al-Qaeda sleeper agent. But because he was deluded by radical Christianity instead of radical Islam, he probably won't be treated as such. The groups that cheer on Rogers won't be investigated. Their assets won't be seized. Their members won't be demonized for the things they wrote and spoke that led directly to violence. They will be treated as anomalies, not the mainstream of a virulent, anti-American ideology. We will be told by anti-choice politicians that they don't advocate violence and that we shouldn't think that all anti-choice protesters are like Rogers. We will be expected to believe them.

There is a war, yes, in this country that has nothing to do with the utterly minor threat of Islamic terrorism occurring here. It is a war on women that is waged by state legislatures, with more restrictions on abortion access passed than ever, and it is a war waged by the very random, violent psychopaths that the government is supposed to have been granted wide power to protect us from.

Now, we can argue about whether or not the government should have those powers. But, surely, more women (and men) in this nation have been intimidated by Christian fundamentalists than have ever even thought they were threatened by Muslims. Imagine if it had been a Muslim man who tossed a bottle bomb at, say, an army recruiting office in a strip mall because he opposes American foreign policy. Imagine the wrath that would have been brought down on him.

How is Rogers any different? Oh, that's right. We're supposed to be furious about the larger implications of fantasy Muslims and we're supposed to ignore the very real implications of the very real Christian terrorists.

2012-01-05T11:00:00.003-05:00

Right-Wingers and Obama's Recess Appointments: Now It's Imperial to Just Execute the Laws:
Man, the Nancies of the right have their panties all bunched up into their ass cracks over President Obama's recess appointments of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Bureau and of three members of the National Labor Relations Board, just so those agencies can actually function. They're screeching like Real Housewives being told that surgery to remove their melanoma might leave scars.

The New York Post, in an editorial charmingly titled "King Barack's Power Grab," wept, "President Obama yesterday played a violent game of kickball with the US Constitution, making a number of high-level “recess” appointments — even though the Senate isn’t actually in recess." Ahh, there's the outrage. See, the Senate is doing the pro forma dance, making sure that someone walks into the chamber and bangs a gavel every three days so that it's never actually "in recess." That's in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 5: "Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days."

But, see, Obama, with approval from his lawyers, said, "You know what? Fuck that shit. Let's play." The Wall Street Journal sniffled, "In this case, the House of Representatives had not formally consented to Senate adjournment. It's true the House did this to block the President from making recess appointments, but it is following the Constitution in doing so...Democrats had used a similar process to try to thwart Mr. Bush's recess appointments late in his term when they controlled both the House and the Senate...Majority Leader Harry Reid kept the Senate in pro forma session. Some advisers urged Mr. Bush to ignore the Senate and make recess appointments anyway, but he declined."

Ahh, now there's the ass-kick. Bush didn't try it. In other words, Republicans and their right-wing media lackeys are pissed because they're jealous. Oh, sure, it's totally okay for Senate Republicans to have used the filibuster in an unprecedented way to change the very process of bills have to be voted on. That's kosher. But this? Well, that's just way too dickish only because they didn't get to do it first. Harry Reid must be laughing his glasses off.

Oh, and then there's this from Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution: "[The President] may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper." And a disagreement is exactly what happened: the Democratic Senate asked the Republican House to adjourn. The House declined and thus the cycle of pro forma sessions started. Thus the President can invoke this power. It exists in case Congress becomes too dysfunctional, like, you know, it is, thanks to the GOP. (Right now, this section is not the legal reasoning being put forth by the White House, which is simply asserting that the pro forma sessions do not mean Congress is in session.)

And if Obama is feeling particularly pissy, the Constitution actually says that he can keep the Congress adjourned as long as he damn well pleases.

The sad part is that Obama is doing this just because he wants to fulfill another clause of Article 2, Section 3. That says the President "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Republicans were blocking nominees in these specific positions because it didn't want the laws that previous congresses had passed to be executed. Instead of attempting to overturn the laws through the, you know, legislative process, they were just obstructionist cocks. Once again, to get the merest of things done, President Obama had to slap those erect pricks out of his face and tell their owners that he was done sucking them off, and that the Republicans can go fuck themselves.

(For extra fun, check out torture-enabler John Yoo being a total douchebomb about the recess appointments.)

2012-01-04T10:48:00.006-05:00

Favorite Out-of-Context Quotes From Last Night's Media Coverage of the Iowa Caucus:
Because, really, in the end, the only significance of the whole goddamn, bullshit exercise will be that it ends the candidacy of Michele Bachmann and forces us to deal with another couple of months of Santorum jokes and Ron Paul cult members desperately trying to get us to stop misunderstanding their leader and more until Mitt Romney is the nominee and he loses badly to Barack Obama, let's just have some fun with the endless coverage of the non-event that was the Iowa Caucus (Caucuses?). Essentially, for CNNMSNBCFox, the evening had all the drama of masturbation: you know that, no matter what freaky porn you decide to use to get off, the end result is gonna be the same. So, instead, here's stupid shit that people said last night:

1. "South Carolina is historically ugly." - Totally not-ugly blogger Erick "Erick" Erickson on CNN.

2. "I will have your back in Washington, D.C." - Totally not-gay candidate Rick Perry during his rape threat/speech saying, more or less, "Fuck all y'all. I'm goin' home." (Note: his campaign says he's making a last stand in ugly ass South Carolina.)

3. "We're in a prolonged bust." - Totally not-boobie-centric candidate Ron Paul in a speech to caucusers (Caucasians?) in Ankeny, Iowa.

4. "It could be a pig pile in South Carolina." - Bret Baier on Fox "news." Man, South Carolina must be filled with disgusting people. Or maybe that's just a Myrtle Beach orgy during spring break.

5. "I said the other night of The Godfather...I'm sorry. It must have been The Untouchables with De Niro attending the opera enjoying Pagliacci while his guy was gunning down Jimmy the police officer. I mean it's become that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." - Chris Matthews on MSNBC, talking about Mitt Romney's upbeat speeches and the negative ads his PAC put out. Maybe. Perhaps. Who the fuck knows, really.

6. "Going back to the time of William Penn who came to this country to bring the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, to the time of the pilgrims who came here also to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, who stated that they willingly laid down their lives, literally as stepping stones, so that the next generation would prosper and know religious liberty." - Michele Bachmann, speaking to caucusuckers in Black Hawk County, pretty much saying why she came in last. Because Jesus hates her.

7. "I was a Fred Thompson girl last turnaround." - Totally not-incompetent pundit Dina Loesch on CNN.

8. "[I]t's where my grandfather came, back in 1925. He came by himself, even though he was married." - Candidate Rick Santorum, telling us way too much about his family and a spot you should perhaps avoid in Pennsylvania.

2012-01-03T09:46:00.002-05:00

Iowa Is Your Nation:
Let's face it: those of us who live in large urban areas on the various edges of the United States are smug fuckers. We see ourselves as more sophisticated, more intelligent, more in touch than the yahoos who fill the rest of the nation and fuck it up for us. Sure, we have our problems; sure, we have our fights; sure, we have our assholes. In other words, mostly, we're wrong and jerks about it.

But the thing is that we're less wrong about our self-image than people in the middle-sized cities and small towns that fill the nation. For every moment of a town coming together to help out each other after a fire or flood, there's another instance of intolerance or ignorance that poisons the good will. (Note: go ahead, cite shit about NYC, the Ground Zero "mosque," the racism of the cops, we know, we know. Here's the difference: most of us are ashamed of that ignorance, not proud of it, as other places are. Oh, and our crime rate is lower than most of yours.)

The Rude Pundit is not talking out of his overeducated ass here. He's walked the motherfuckin' walk. He lived for a few years in a barn on a corn farm in the Midwest where the nearest neighbor was literally (he odometered it) a mile away. The couple hundred acre place was owned and planted and harvested by a farmer named Joe who didn't have his cats neutered because, as he said, "The road fixes 'em." The Rude Pundit's lived in the middle of a small, depressed, awful Midwest city. He's lived in the Deep South, the Deep, Deep South, and the Not-As-Deep South. And he wasn't staying in his towers of ivory, looking down on the rabble. Oh, no. He was out and about, going native, doing all those things that seem oh-so-exotic to the Yankees and San Frans. You ever been to a combine demolition derby? You ever cut sugar cane and chewed it out in the field? You ever sat on a porch in the mountains while musicians who worked factory day jobs had a bluegrass jam? You ever been to a snake-handling church? Yeah. Suck it. This blogger's got country cred to go with his big city ways.

When University of Iowa journalism professor Stephen Bloom wrote in The Atlantic his take on what "Iowa" really is, he created an uproar in the state. But put aside Bloom's douchebaggery in his description, the kind of pure dickishness that should be left to blogs. Put aside that Bloom is an academic who obviously feels like he's better than where he lives and deserved to get a job in a big city instead of being stranded in the hellhole of the tenure-line gig he accepted because he thought, surely, it would just be temporary, and, oh, fuck, he got tenure and realized he was gonna die in motherfuckin' Iowa.

And, instead, look at what he actually describes (before he gets all snotty about the cultural shit): a place afflicted by an economy that had its union manufacturing plant jobs shifted overseas, that is left with a low-wage positions, like slaughterhouse and farm work, done by immigrants legal and illegal, a place where evangelical Christians pray for a better life beyond because this one sucks so hard. "Those who stay in rural Iowa are often the elderly waiting to die, those too timid (or lacking in educated) to peer around the bend for better opportunities, an assortment of waste-toids and meth addicts with pale skin and rotted teeth," Bloom writes (and, yes, all of this has been disputed and argued with and threats have been made on Bloom and his family). "Suicides in Iowa's rural counties are 13.55 per 100,000 residents; New York's suicide rate is 5.4 residents per 100,000." Depression is high and the number of mental health clinics is low.

Here is the gut-churning thing that most of us here in the concrete jungle don't want to admit about Iowa. Put racial demographics aside for a moment. The reality is that, whether we like it or not, Iowa is the nation. It's a fucked-up place of desperate people seeking escape in drugs or gambling or fatty food or liquor or the internet, attempting to exist in a harsh landscape that promises so much constantly but fails far more often than it succeeds, deranged with religion and bludgeoned by a constant barrage of political information that is overkill to such an extent that it makes Iowa native John Wayne Gacy seem subtle by comparison, eking out moments of pleasure and communing with family or neighbors or friends that, like that hit of the pipe or the hope of the slot machine button push, give moments of release. Bloom's article could have been written about Kansas or Montana or New Hampshire or South Carolina or Oregon or Washington or New York or California or Illinois or Texas or Tennessee or, or, or, or.

Yes, like the fact that Senators from Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah, states that, together, don't have the population of New York City, can halt the progress of the nation, Iowa has no business having such importance in the calendar of our quadrennial national punishment known as our presidential election season. The Rude Pundit stands by what he wrote four years ago. It's the vote of 20% of registered Republicans. Who the fuck cares? And, please, media, stop trying to make us care. Stop trying to make us think that anything is going to happen other than Mitt Romney winning the nomination. It's not.

But what we can't deny is that Iowa works as a representation of a nation on the edge of falling into its own shitpile. We are living on the brink. And our politicians have proposed that we inch away from the cliff rather than run. While people are scrambling to make a living in Iowa and elsewhere, the Republican candidates are talking about who hates abortions more.

(You want to end on a note of hope? Fine: right now, Des Moines doesn't suck, and the state is going urban. Meth usage has actually gone down in the last couple of years, probably out of incarceration and death. And Omaha, Nebraska, is just across the river, and that place rocked the last time the Rude Pundit visited.)

(Oh, one last thing: Farmer Joe's farm wife left him and their two sons for a man who worked at the local tanning salon. Farmer Joe's farm, which had been in his family for generations, was failing. Farmer Joe sat at the kitchen table and told the Rude Pundit that he had stalked his wife and seen him with the guy. Farmer Joe said that he wanted to take his shotgun and kill himself. The Rude Pundit reminded him of his boys. The Rude Pundit gave him a few names so he could get help. And then the Rude Pundit moved out of the barn and into the small city down the road.)

2012-01-02T11:31:00.003-05:00

Haiku Review of 2011, Part 3: The End:
The Rude Pundit read so many haiku this past weekend he thought he would turn Japanese. Here's the last ones for the look back at 2011, one year closer to our doom at the hands of bankers and Republicans, all to be televised with gleeful approval by Rupert Murdoch. There's no accounting for why your haiku didn't get chosen. Nothing personal, Vince G. and everyone else. Perhaps there's only so many Rick Santorum jokes that one can take (yes, yes, ha, ha, frothy shit, cum, and lube, that's great). Perhaps it's just the Rude Pundit's mood. But, hey, thanks to all who took the time to write.

Other than the election, what was most on everyone's mind was jobs, money, and occupation. 2011 is done. Let's toss the corpse in an acid bath and move on:

From R.H.:
My Target Shopping
Saved the economy.
Where's MY lobbyist?

From Tim L.:
The only "union
thugs" I saw at Occupy?
Cops using chem bombs.

From Tom G.:
Where did the coin go?
Rich got richer - poor got screwed
History repeats.

From Robert J.:
History's proven
that the greatest leeches are
Ayn Rand's devotees

From Gavin B.:
I will bring the torch
you will bring the gasoline
The bankers go first

From Bernie J. in NYC:
Song of the American People
Rights? Rights? Who needs rights?
We’ve got American Idol
And internet porn

From Steve L.:
Osama is dead
America does its best
Killing in the night

From dear, longtime reader Iris K. in Germany:
Fukushima what?
Some people ask, and they say
I only watch Fox.

From Doug S.:
Arab Spring, then what?
Just because Qaddafi's gone?!
Spring leads to Winter.

From Cheeseflap (really?):
Drill Baby Drill
Pests jump to new spot
Untapped pools of treasured blood;
Earth needs flea collar

Okay, one last Santorum one:
From Rev. Ron:
He Deserves It
Poor Rick Santorum
Google gleefully fucked him
Right up his tight ass

And shameless shilling done by Jack H. of Illinois:
One Rude Almanack
My pre-order placed and paid
Do the same, fuckers.

2011-12-30T13:47:00.002-05:00

Haiku Review of 2011, Part 2: The Readers Have a Haiku Orgy:
The Rude Pundit asked you to contribute year-end haiku, and, sweet Japanese Jesus, you responded, with over 100 little poems, with more flowing in. Keep 'em coming. Here's today's first dose of ten rude reader takes on what 2011 events got their juices flowing:

From BAB in Los Angeles:
Maybe Newt Is Onto Something!
A recall would work,
But Scott Walker should also
Wipe down school toilets.

From Rabbitearz in the San Fernando Valley:
Coach Sandusky asked
Santa for soap-on-a-rope.
Lives swirl down the drain.

From John P.:
The Job Creators
Rugged, creative
pillars of capitalism
whine when uncertain!

From Vixen Strangely:
The 99%
Millions fill the streets,
while billions fill their coffers,
still we will be heard.

From Hector R. :
Geithner and cronies
Gambling With Peoples' Money
Piggies In A Trough

From Shelley M.:
Fat, angry white men
make Rush Limbaugh a hero
yet mock gay soldiers

From Mark D.:
Traveling now blows
Chertoff hawks porno scanners
Theater for the dumb

From Carl S.:
Postponing the Inevitable
The debates go on.
Each candidate has his day.
Howdy Doody waits.

From Jim L:
Mission Accomplished!
Osama sleeps with fishes
Somewhere Dubya cries

From Deanna F.:
Rick Perry's jacket,
Fleecy, rough and deeply queer.
Go repression, go.

From Sue M.:
Eleven is done
Twelve can’t get here soon enough
Bye, motherfuckers!

2011-12-29T18:19:00.002-05:00

A Haiku Review of 2011, Part 1: The Candidates:

One Slimy Beast Too Many
More ethics can be
Found in the eye of a newt
Than in all of Newt

A Very Bachmann Moment
Michele ate a fair
Corn dog wide-mouthed. Envious
Marcus wept loudly.

Don't Work Yourself Into a Froth
Santorum rising
Is just inevitable.
Physics works that way.

Flop
Do not tell Romney
That he’s changed his mind. He has
A dog cage for you.

The Third Person
Herman Cain said that
Herman Cain was different.
Cain’s penis was not.

Counting
If Rick Perry was
Lawrence Welk, the poor band would
Never have started.

Front Runner
Oh, woe to Ron Paul,
Crazy as a shithouse rat,
But, man, I love pot.

(Submit your own 2011-lovin' haiku to "rudepundit@yahoo.com". Best to be published starting tomorrow.)

2011-12-29T09:50:00.002-05:00

Later Today: The Rude Pundit Will Haiku You:
And, holy shit, you're a bunch of haiku writing motherfuckers. Over fifty received so far. Keep 'em coming.

2011-12-28T11:03:00.003-05:00

An Invitation to Haiku Yourself and a Bit o' Joy:
Oh, it's that time, it's that time, it's that time again. The Rude Pundit rings out the old on a few words. Starting tomorrow, he'll be posting his annual end o' the year haiku retrospective. And he invites readers to send in their own trio of lines (5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables - the Rude Pundit likes his forms, motherfuckers). For instance, longtime rude reader and haiku contributor Mona P. got a jump on the festivities by sending in this one (even if she cheated on the last line):

2011 Countdown To Oblivion
Blackbirds plummeting
Arab spring when tyrants fell
Occupators fill streets

Send your own to "rudepundit@yahoo.com." Titles are not required. Neither are pants. The Rude Pundit will publish the best ones or the ones that tickle him in bad places on Friday and, if there's a-plenty, Monday.

And because life is not politics alone...

A Few Things That Brought the Rude Pundit Joy in This Wearying Year in This Ragged Nation:
1. Two musical moments: Elvis Costello tearing the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, New Jersey apart with a savage version of "I Want You." Over ten minutes of snarling singing and face-melting guitar work that was exhausting and exhilarating. And, at the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee in the intense heat of Sunday at noon, hearing The Head and the Heart perform their song "Rivers and Roads" was pure, unbathed hippie bliss.

2. Two museum moments: The Experience Music Project in Seattle is the museum that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame would be if it stopped trying to be a grown-up. And the Nirvana exhibit was actually, really interesting. At the Brooklyn Museum, the Norman Rockwell show was revelatory in an unexpected way: it showed how artificial his works were, in a way that you always knew, but really wanted them not to be. Just like America.

3. Two movies: Martin Scorsese's Hugo, which the Rude Pundit despised until, about two-thirds of the way through, during the George Melies sequence he realized he loved it. And the animated flick Rango, which was a deeply-weird, subversive drug dream masked as a kid's movie.

4. Two theatre moments (both on Broadway): The mythic end of the viscerally exciting play Jerusalem, where you realize that, sometimes, even liars are telling the truth. And, even though you're sick of hearing about it, The Book of Mormon, which was so funny and so twisted and so stupefyingly sweet (even with jokes about baby-fucking and having AIDS) that it actually helped the Rude Pundit feel better in the wake of a personal tragedy.

5. One TV moment: Yeah, yeah, The Walking Dead was too fucking talky and not enough zombie-killy this season so far. But when zombie Sophie walked out of that barn, it was a nut-kick that you rarely get on television. Hope, it seems, was for suckers.

2011-12-27T11:37:00.002-05:00

In Brief: A Few Lazy Observations on Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and Barack Obama:
1. In a quote that got a bit lost last week in the orgy of various and sundry holiday celebrations, Barack Obama said, when asked by Barbara Walters about mistakes he's made as president, "When it comes to dealing with Congress, you know, of late, I've said, I'm not going to wait for Congress. I'm going to go ahead and just do whatever I have in my executive power. I think that there were times in my first couple a years where I kept on sitting there trying to see if we can negotiate some sort of compromise, and there just was a lot of refusal on the other side's part to compromise. And, I'd just stay at it...but as a consequence, I think a lot of time was lost that frustrated a lot of people around the country. They want to see action on behalf of some of these issues."

Whoa, whoa, there. You mean that Obama is realizing that motherfuckers actually do fuck their mothers? And that from here on out he's going to behave accordingly? Well, dude, put up or shut up.

2. Hey, poor, deluded Ron Paul supporters, how does it feel now that your racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, paranoid candidate is getting all the attention you've felt he deserved? And to the Rude Pundit's friends who have tried to convince him since 2008 about the awesomeness that is Ron Paul, is drug legalization really worth that much of your self-esteem? And even if by some miracle he is nominated, remember what Paul himself said: he can't catch up to a running black man.

3. But, really, at the end of the day, fer fuck's sake, Republicans, just accept that Mitt Romney is your nominee. In a whiny-ass editorial in the Weekly Standard, William Kristol offers blow jobs and crystal meth to any savior candidate who jumps into the Republican race. "[I]t is no time for leaders to duck responsibility," he says before going into great detail about how he can't go another minute without getting Christie or Jeb or Rubio spooge on his face. It's kind of embarrassing to see what a shameless knob-gobbler Kristol admits to being.

It's Romney. It was always gonna be Romney. Just like it was always gonna be McCain. Just like it was always gonna be Dole. Sometimes things are just inevitable. Embrace it. Because any candidate that has any smarts at all ain't getting in this race just so that Michele Bachmann can get nasal and nasty on them or that they have to endure the degrading spectacle of being on a stage with Newt Gingrich. Ask Rick Perry how that savior gig worked out.

(Fun fact: In 1994, Kristol predicted in Campaigns and Election magazine that Bill Clinton would start and win "a large-scale land war" to shore up his popularity, that he'd have a primary challenger in 1996, and lose the election with less than 40% of the vote. Pay that man for advice.)

2011-12-26T16:26:00.002-05:00

Buy the Book, Listen to the Podcast, End Your Christmas Rudely:
1. You know how you got that new Kindle and are wondering what book you should purchase for future reading? Well, for Chrissake, invest in the 2012 edition of The Rude Pundit's Alamanack because unless you (in combination with everyone else in the world) purchase 500 copies, for Kindle, Nook, iPad, other thingamajigs, or hands, it won't be published and the country will collapse.

2. The Rude Pundit is pretty sure he's gotten to the point where he's pissing spiked egg nog. So while he cleans vomit off the stockings and...aw, who left a condom in the manger? Right on Joseph? That's just cruel ...you can enjoy last week's episode of Cheater and the Rude. The Rude Pundit doesn't remember much of what he said because of a visit to a fine pub beforehand, but he think he said some nasty, mean things about Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and co-host Jeff Kreisler:

Podcast Powered By Podbean

The book costs 10 bucks for the e-version. The podcast is always on the Rude Pundit.

2011-12-23T11:28:00.000-05:00

Continuing a Christmas Tradition (Now with Rubber Duckies):
Like movies about Bedford Falls suicides and the first and last time most of us ever heard of Gimbels, some things are a tradition around the rude house. Reruns are good for the soul. Like this blast from 2004, updated with a new and horrifying photo:

Xmas - And, lo, a small teddy bear will lead them:
In the days before Christmas, the Rude Pundit roamed his neighborhood, looking at the displays in the charming stores and corner markets. There he saw the agony of so many dichotomous feelings about this holiday. One window had a kneeling, praying Santa next to a baby Jesus in the manger. Santa's hat was off. He was balding. Another display had the jolly old fat man landing his sleigh and reindeer on the roof of the manger. Surprisingly, neither Mary nor Joseph seemed rattled by the noise, although a camel was looking upward, as if asking, "What the fuck?" The Rude Pundit loved that camel.

Ah, sweet camel, what the fuck, indeed. Christ and commerce, Alleluia. The Savior has been born and he thanks you for your presents. Santa showing that he'll even honor the king of the Jews in the land of Islam. There's no telling what it means (and don't get all up in the Rude Pundit's face about St. Nicholas). Except this: we want to embrace both things, good deconstructionists that we are: Santa, who soothes our greed,and Jesus, who promises us peace. Either way, we want them both to tell us we're good people, nice people. And, of course, guilt-ridden Christians want to make sure that Santa toes the party line, you know.

For the holiday, here's a few of the Rude Pundit's favorite Nativity sets:

That right there is the Veggie Tales Nativity. In case you don't know, Veggie Tales are cute vegetables who love Christ and salad tossing. The newborn savior up there is a carrot. Get it? A baby carrot? What a delight.

Holy shit, that bear nativity is one of the creepiest fucking things the Rude Pundit's ever seen. Staring straight ahead with their dead eyes, it looks like a satanic cult sacrifice to some horrible bear-demon. Although, the three wise bears have provided snacks for the blood rite: salmon, honey, and berries. All go well with cub entrails.

The Boyds Bears Nativity is way better and cuter, even if, in that picture, they all seem to be looking at you and saying, "We can see you masturbate."

And who can take a bath without your rubber duckie nativity? You can use one of your nipples as the Star of Bethlehem.

This is not to mention the Chickentivity, the Moosetivity, the Barntivity, the Native American Nativity, and the various Beartivities, all available unironically for your Christmas consumption.

(Note: Previous editions of the nativity post have included the Dogtivity, but Mitt Romney put Dog Mary, Dog Joseph, and Puppy Jesus in a cage on top of his car and drove around until he killed them.)

2011-12-22T10:40:00.003-05:00

Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Down a Handful of Thorazine With a Bottle of Jack Daniels:

A dozen coordinated car bombings, including at a hospital, 70 dead, a couple of hundred wounded, a Vice President accused of running death squads on the run in Kurdistan, a government about to collapse, the security forces already seen as failures. That was a trillion dollars well-spent. The Rude Pundit wonders if the wounded and the families of the dead in Iraq wish that the United States was still there or if they had never come at all.

The final withdrawal of (nearly all) troops from Iraq is simply the movement to the next phase of inevitable violence in that nation. You know what the most awful, pathetic thing is? That the Arab Spring might have spread to Iraq. That the people there would have overthrown Saddam Hussein, as Libyans did Qaddhafi (with some NATO assistance). That they would have decided their fate by rising up in messy, contentious unity and then had to work it out for themselves.

When we in this nation think about the cost of the war, when we think about what we actually did to that country, when we think about what we've done to ourselves, when we think of all the people who got away with this crime, when we hear politicians who supported the thing in the first place now say, "If we knew then what we know now," we should curl into a fetal ball and ask for this to be lobotomized from our national conscience. But we should be told that it can't be cut out or erased. And the other worst part is that not only are we damned to remember, we are damned to arrogantly ignore it and move on.

2011-12-21T10:31:00.005-05:00

One Man in Iowa Speaks for a Tired Nation Regarding Newt Gingrich:

The Rude Pundit knows nothing about Tom Sorensen, that white-goateed, bespectacled man up there in hunting drag. For all we know, he might be someone who keeps small children in a pit in his backyard or someone who fucks mounted deer heads. He might be a crazed evangelical who forces his frightened wife to recite the Book of Revelations while he whips her and jacks off in her hair. He might be a gun-loving murderer of hitchhikers who thinks 9/11 was an inside job and supports Ron Paul. He might actually be Satan. None of that matters for just this instance. In one moment, that man actually looked into the corrupt, vile, evil eyes of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and said, "You're a fucking asshole."

And for that brief moment, Tom Sorensen is America's greatest hero.

The rest of this post could list the myriad reasons why Newt Gingrich is, in fact, a fucking asshole. That'd be easy. It's pretty much self-evident. But let's not bother.

Instead, in the midst of Hanukkah, with Christmas rolling at us like a Santa-driven steamroller in the weary end of this exhausting year, let us allow the wassail-like warmth of Sorensen's simple, astute observation wash over us with holiday cheer and just a bit of joy for the common man. Let us merely say, "Yes, yes, Newt Gingrich is a fucking asshole. Nothing more. Nothing less. And God bless you, Tom Sorensen, for saying that right in his fat face."

2011-12-20T11:17:00.003-05:00

PolitiFact and the Lie of the Lie:
We all know how it goes. We've seen it in a million movies, TV shows, books. We've experienced it again and again. You can be a major cocksman, someone who can walk into a place like the Tampa Mens Club, ripped and hung, and, great glory hole, find a willing mouth in no time flat. But there's that one dude, that one buff, spiky blonde who just rejects you outright. He shuts down your game, he ignores your jokes, he doesn't glance at your pecs while you do some awesome lifts. Nothing. In fact, he tells you flat out in the locker room that he thinks you're full of shit, that you don't turn him on, and "Can you get those shaved balls out of my face?" Now, of course, you could just tell him and his friends, who laugh at his rejection of you, to fuck off, that you don't need 'em, and just ride another pony, but, goddamnit, how dare he not want you? And then you start doing stupid shit to try to get him to see that you are suck-worthy. You tell others how hot you think he is. You try to let him see how much you're checking him out. You laugh at jokes he tells across the room. In other words, you become a pathetic ass. And however cool or hot you may have been, you're just blowing it all away on someone who just doesn't want to fuck you.

This game plays out all the time in Washington, DC. What has a significant part of Obama's first term been other than a sad attempt to get Republicans to see him as worthy of their votes? How has that shaken out? And you remember when National Public Radio decided to start "balancing" its news broadcasts with more conservative viewpoints (which meant really just offering someone to spin the facts All Things Considered was reporting) because Republicans were threatening to defund it? That was actually back in the mid-1990s. Did that end all the "controversy" over its funding?

Back in February of this year, the blog Smart Politics, of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, released a study that said that PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning effort of the St. Petersburg Times to rate the truth of the words of politicians' and others, had assigned "'Pants on Fire' or 'False' ratings to 39 percent of Republican statements compared to just 12 percent of Democrats since January 2010." Another way to put that is that, of all the statements rated so low, Republicans made 76% of them, compared to just 22% of Democrats. You can flounder around for excuses if you want, but the study showed that the nearly the same number of statements from each side was analyzed. So, in order to attack PolitiFact, you can only say that its editors are biased and deliberately choose statements by Republicans that they know will be proven false. It's either that or it's just that Republicans are generally lying motherfuckers, which would be the easy answer.

Of course, like so many who are afraid of being perceived as too liberal and need desperately to be loved by Republicans, PolitiFact has now overcompensated with a completely fucktarded choice for its "Lie of the Year" for 2011: that Democrats lied when they said that "Republicans voted to end Medicare," despite the fact that Republicans voted to make a government-run health insurance program into a private insurance voucher system and just call it "Medicare," when "Medicare," as we know it, would cease to exist. In other words, they voted to end Medicare.

Others have dissected how this supposed "lie" is actually true, and it's been roundly mocked in Left Blogsylvania and Twitterburg.

But PolitiFact's own defense of its decision is obscenely absurd: Democrats are lying because current old people will still have Medicare? But that's called a "phase-out," which you do when you are, you know, ending something. And that it was an "overreach" for Democrats to use the words "kill" or "end" because the program would still exist? Except that it wouldn't exist. It's like PolitiFact used logic out of a Family Guy episode: just because actor James Woods stole Peter Griffin's wallet, he could claim he was Peter Griffin, and everyone is forced to believe it or be accused of lying. (Yeah, yeah, but the Rude Pundit was trying to find an analogy that everyone else hadn't used.)

In fact, one could make the case that in order to call this a "lie," PolitiFact itself has to, for lack of a better word, lie about how Paul Ryan's newfangled Medicare is the same as current Medicare.

Mostly, though, it's pathetic because the whole thing is such pandering to Republicans. And, sorry, dear newspapers concerned about things like "facts" and "reality" and "truth," but they're not gonna fuck you. They tend to only want to fuck themselves.

2011-12-19T11:55:00.003-05:00

Mitt Romney: The Invisible Man:
Now that we're in the inevitable Newt Gingrich death spiral (wherein Republican voters remember that in order to vote for Newt Gingrich, they'd have to actually vote for Newt Gingrich), and we're in what will also inevitably be a quick flirtation with Ron Paulism (whose continued, crazed personal vendetta against Gingrich is one of the great spectator sports of the dying days of this awful year, like watching a hyena feast on a fat hippo corpse), we are on the verge of conservatives accepting their awful Mitt Romney-led fate.

It would simple enough to dismiss the GOP base's refusal to accept Mitt Romney as being because of the candidate's Mormonism (which, let's be fair, is no more or less insane than most other religions in its devotion to lies), but it's something more primal: they just don't like him. They understand that Romney is nothing but a suit, a very nice designer suit, but a suit without a body, a hair style without a head. Not only a robot, as he's often described (by, for instance, some stupid bloggers), he's a void, an invisible man whose attempts to make himself into a flesh and blood being only succeed in demonstrating just how hollow he is.

For instance, yesterday, on Fox "news" Sunday with Mike Wallace's unsuccessfully aborted child, Chris, Romney just came across as someone desperate not to take a real stand on anything because he's afraid a belief would inconvenience him. Look at this:

Regarding President Obama and the economy: "First of all, he was not the reason that the economy hit bottom and then begins to recover. We have gone through recessions before. He made this one worse. And he made the recovery more tepid." So, in those two sentences, Romney said that Obama didn't make the economy "hit bottom," but he made it worse, which means that he made it hit below bottom, one can presume. And Obama's not responsible for the recovery, but he's responsible for the recovery?

On Obama and the death of Osama bin Laden: "With regards to Osama bin Laden, we're delighted that he gave the order to take out Osama bin Laden, any president would have done that. But this one did and that's a good thing." He doesn't deserve credit for killing bin Laden, but let's give him credit for killing bin Laden?

And then sometimes Romney wants it all ways, like a particularly horny twink who stumbled into a leather bar. Like with regards to the war in Iraq, in which he gives the wimpiest history lesson ever: "[W]e didn't have the knowledge that we have now...And in the light of that -- that belief, we took action which was appropriate at the time. Lessons learned along the way, you know, I think our military would say a lot of lessons learned. We probably should have gone in, going in with a heavier footprint. I think there was a sense that when -- when on the ship it said 'Mission Accomplished,' that the mission had been accomplished. It turns out it was just getting started and we had to pursue a surge very late in the process. The surge was successful. And fortunately, we've now been able to pull our troops out. We're, of course, very happy to see our troops come out." But he wishes we had left behind 30,000 of them. In other words, everyone gets a pass and, hey, it's over, so a Romney administration won't have to deal with it. Next question?

Let's not even get into the brain damage or skeevy political worthlessness required to make the logical leap that Romney makes about the Massachusetts health care plan, when he says, "I like what we did. I'm proud of what we did. I'm not going to tell Texas what Texas has to do or California or New York. I think the ideas that we put forward work." You got that? The Massachusetts plan actually works (for many people). But, Texas, you come up with whatever shit plan you want so that the level of care around the country is so different that it's actually a human rights issue. All because we don't want to tell states how to treat the citizens of the country.

Of course GOP voters are desperate for whatever bits of substantial beings they can cling to so as to avoid the weightlessness of Romney. It's not just the endless parade of policy reversals throughout Romney's life (and throughout this campaign and throughout this day, more than likely). It's not that he's running with less experience as an elected official than Barack Obama or anyone else left in the Republican race (Romney was a one-term governor who announced two years into his term that he wasn't gonna run for re-election, so look for Sarah Palin's endorsement). It's not even his creepy business investment background, which just means he never got his hands dirty in real work.

It's that there's nothing there. He puts out plans that sound like every conservative ingredient tossed into a blender and then the flavor is taken out. It's like that goo that's used to make chicken nuggets. Why, sure, you can shape those into tasty square bits. You can get a box of 20 of 'em. But that doesn't mean there's anything nutritional in there.

But the invisible man is the last one standing, GOP. Or is there another?

2011-12-16T16:19:00.000-05:00

Announcing the 2012 Edition of The Rude Pundit's Almanack:
(Update: Bumped up to the top for your weekend sales pitch.)

You know the cool thing about e-books and print-on-demand books? You can change things up. So unlike, say, just about every other book about the current state of politics, which become history as quickly as they're put out, The Rude Pundit's Almanack will kick your ass with new, never-blogged material.

You wanna read the story of the Herman Cain campaign told in dirty limericks?

You wanna read alternate stories of the upcoming presidential campaign (depending on Newt or Romney winning the nomination)?

You wanna play "Who Wants to be a GOP Running Mate?"

Then you want the 2012 Rude Pundit's Almanack.

Oh, but there's a catch, Yossarian. Yes, there's always a catch.

See, OR Books, they're a bunch of crafty bastards over there, with their attempt to come up with new ways to publish things that people will actually pay to read.

They said, "You know, the first edition sold for shit compared with, say, James Patterson. We don't think people want to buy any book from someone they can read every day for free. Milk, meet Cow."

The Rude Pundit responded, "Fuck you, editors. I've given the readers over 8 years, over 2 million words of free shit. They'll buy the book. We just have to sell it right."

And OR Books said, "Prove it, bitch," and pretty much held a gun to the head of The Rude Pundit's Almanack. "Set this little bastard free."

And the Rude Pundit said, "Okay, motherfuckers. Let's dance."

So here's the deal: OR Books will release the 2012 edition of The Rude Pundit's Almanack if, and only if, there's at least 500 pre-sales.

500. That's it. And it can be in cheap e-book form ($10) or less cheap softcover book form ($17).

We don't get to 500, OR Books wins. They will pull the trigger. And the book will bleed e-ink.

Now, you may be asking, "These fucking guys, what'll they do with my money if we don't make 500?" And the answer is that there's honor among editors (hard to believe, but still). They'll refund your money. In full. No bullshit.

You may also ask, "So can I get it for my annoying uncle for Christmas?" The answer is that you can get the 2011 edition any time you want. But the 2012 edition won't be out until, well, shit, 2012. Like closer to spring. If you do order it for a Christmas (or Hanukkah or what the fuck ever) gift, OR Books has said they'll send a nice e-card (huzzah!).

Frankly, the Rude Pundit's excited about this. It's a challenge, a goal, a throwdown. Can we do it? Will those new pieces ever see the light of day?

Oh, and let's advertise this a bit better:
Emmy-award winning Daily Show writer Jo Miller says that The Rude Pundit's Almanack is "a joy — deeply intelligent, pants-wettingly funny and impossible to put down."

The 2012 edition may actually make you shit yourself. In a good way.

2011-12-16T11:15:00.002-05:00

Why Does Newt Gingrich Hate Janitors (and Their Union) So Much?:
Now that Newt Gingrich's idea to break the mighty hold that the janitors' unions have on our precious school systems by making poor children clean their fellow students' piss and shit off the toilets, why not look back on his bizarre 1990s fixation on the people who mop up vomit and empty trash cans.

From a 1991 speech to Citizens for a Sound Economy: "[F]or example, what if we simply allowed parents to help repair their children's schools -- obviously a heretical thought in New York City. And yet, that kind of participation which would automatically lead to chaos, because the custodian's union would go nuts."

From his 1992 CPAC speech: "The [Reader's Digest] article begins with an anecdote about a $57,000 a year public school janitor whose contract requires him to mop the floor of the school three time a year. Not three times a week, not three times a month, not three times a quarter: three times a year. Fifty-seven thousand dollars a year. Furthermore, he is required to sweep every other day, and he has to mop the cafeteria once a week, even though they serve food in it five meals a day. So every twenty-fifth meal, he has to mop the cafeteria. And the Custodians' Union is opposed to allowing parents and volunteers to come in and clean up the filth." By the way, he repeated that anecdote many times over, including in his speech to the Republican National Convention.

In 1994, when he became Speaker of the House, he fired a bunch of janitors who had worked at the Capitol for years. They were told they could re-apply for their jobs under the Republican regime. He also said that collective bargaining rights did not apply to them.

In 1995, janitors who were protesting budget cuts in Washington, DC, were arrested when they "barged into" Gingrich's office.

Seriously, what's with the hating on janitors?

As ever, now, more than ever in this century, the Rude Pundit says, "Fuck You, Newt Gingrich":

2011-12-15T09:56:00.002-05:00

What Barack Obama Should Have Said While Announcing the End of the Iraq War (Rude Version):
President Obama gave a speech at Fort Bragg yesterday to declare the end of the 8.75 year war in Iraq. It was measured and vague. Here's what he should have said:

"More than 1.5 million Americans have served in Iraq. 1.5 million. Over 30,000 Americans have been wounded, and those are only the wounds that show. Nearly 4,500 Americans made the ultimate sacrifice. To all of them, to all of you, and to your families, I just want to say, 'We're sorry.' I mean, holy shit are we sorry. We can't say how sorry we are. I could have a couple of hundred thousand prostitutes ready to fuck each and every one of you, and that wouldn't scratch the surface of how sorry we are. By the way, we do not have those prostitutes because John Boehner refused to fund them.

"I look out there on all of your tired, confused, if relieved faces. Some of you have fond memories of building schools or playgrounds, of happy Iraqi children smiling at you, of people thanking you for ridding the nation of Saddam Hussein. But you're all wondering, 'What the fuck was that for?' And, to be honest, I cannot tell you. I can tell you that it was all a colossal clusterfuck and a waste of time and lives and money, for several reasons.

"First, within the next few years, Iraq is going to descend into chaos, and there is not a goddamned thing we can do about it unless we want to overthrow the government and install someone who is totally our puppet and stay there in large numbers forever. But, c'mon, if these fuckers wanna kill each other, it's gonna happen, whether it's Shi'ites from Iran or Sunnis from Syria making the violence roll. People gotta start this shit from within. That's what we learned this year in places like Tunisia and Libya. And it could still end up with fucking chaos.

"Second, you're returning to an America that this war, among other things, has serious fucked up. You're not gonna get jobs. You're not gonna get the help you need. If you're on unemployment, we can't even guarantee that that'll last. Sure, sure, I can say that we passed the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, so that you and your families can get the education that allows you to live out your dreams. That includes a national effort to put our veterans to work. We’ve worked with Congress to pass a tax credit so that companies have the incentive to hire vets. And Michelle has worked with the private sector to get commitments to create 100,000 jobs for those who’ve served. But, c'mon. We've fucked ourselves with our own dicks. And when push comes to shove, you know those Republican cocksuckers in Congress will cut your benefits so that Johnny Billionaire can afford more cocaine and bigger tits for his wife and daughter.

"Now, I wanna be honest with you. I wanted to leave about 3000 of you there, along with the thousands of mercenaries we've hired, to keep the peace and so that these fuckers back here in DC wouldn't say that I'm wimping out or that I failed. Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, John McCain. Shut your whore mouth, or you'll see the backside of my pimp hand. It's sad but true that the filthy game of politics infected this sore. The RNC probably already has an ad online about what a pussy I am, even if we are leaving an embassy and 15,000 Americans, including a couple of hundred soldiers.

"Some of you may be wondering why we're not declaring 'Victory' today. That's because there hasn't been victory. There was never gonna be a victory because there was never a real goal. There has only been shame brought upon the nation and death and destruction brought to the Iraqis. Oh, and purple ink for voting. There was that. When he started the war, President Bush said, clearly, 'Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.' That was a miserable lie made by a motherfucker who was trying to act tough. This war was the indulgence of a United States that the previous administration wrecked.

"So I apologize for this war. Yes, I have blood on my hands from my own violence against the world. But not this anymore. We're exiting Iraq because we never should have been there in the first place. I apologize for this war that was forced on you by George W. Bush and his advisers. The only proper punishment would be to have them all on stage here, all of 'em, Bush, Cheney, Condi, Colin Powell, Rumsfeld, Doug Feith, everyone who ever lied to you about WMDs and Saddam Hussein's connection to 9/11, everyone who worked to frighten the American public into a savage froth, each and every one of these cunts, Tony Blair, all the leaders in the coerced coalition of the willing, all of the war profiteers who made millions of dollars.

"And then we'd make them drop their pants. And we'd let all of you line up to fuck them in the ass. The women soldiers can use strap-ons or their fists. That's right: fuck them until they collapse. Fuck them until they can't breathe. Fuck the mechanical heart right out of Cheney's despicable mouth. Fuck them for everyone who died, for everyone who's fucked up, for everyone who can't sleep without having nightmares. Fuck them for the Jessica Lynch lie and for Pat Tillman. Fuck them with a spider hole and Saddam's statue and a 'Mission Accomplished' banner and yellow cake uranium. Fuck them with IEDs and Abu Ghraib leashes. Fuck them for Halliburton and Blackwater. Fuck them in Fallujah and Mosul and Baghdad. Fuck them with shock. Fuck them with awe. And when they're done being fucked and their asses are ripped up and they're on the ground, contemplating what just happened to them, we'll dump vats of blood on them, the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who were killed because of the madness inflicted on two nations, on the world. And then we'll give 'em to the Hague.

"That's what we should do. But we won't. Because that'd be divisive. And Lord knows I wouldn't want to be divisive."

2011-12-14T17:46:00.003-05:00

Book Buying Is Fun (and Here's This Week's Stephanie Miller Show Appearance):
Remember: it's up to you whether or not there's a 2012 Rude Pundit's Almanack. You want to buy the book. You need to buy the book. Is the hypnotism working? Boost the presales and show those bastard alternative publishers at OR Books what for.

Now, here's the Rude Pundit on Monday's Stephanie Miller Show:

Podcast Powered By Podbean

(Subscribing to the Rude Pundit's podcast is free. The book is not, but it's cheap.)

2011-12-14T11:25:00.002-05:00

The Mean, Mean Post Office That Ate the Heart of Christmas:
Ahh, there's nothing like the quality stupid that occurs annually with the various War on Christmas bullshit flogged by Fox "news" and various groups that need to make money scaring the yokels somehow, despite the fact that for two months, you can't go anywhere without seeing wreaths, ornaments, trees, strings of lights, and motherfucking mangers with creepy-ass dolls staring dead-eyed at you. And every year, it seems, there's some new outrage to make Team Baby Jesus rage out.

Like this one: seems that at a Silver Springs, Maryland, post office this past Saturday, a trio of Christmas carolers came in to sing to the people in line to buy stamps, send off, you know, Christmas gifts, and do other post office-y stuff. The postal workers didn't want them to sing. They said asked the makers of merry to leave. They did and caroled elsewhere. End of story, no?

Oh, fucking no. Because, see, J.P. Duffy was there. And J.P. Duffy is the douchey-looking bastard who is the Vice President of Communications for the evangelical Family Research Council. And the motto of the FRC is "Your War on Christmas is our cash bonanza." For an organization that exists to instill fear in the hearts of Christians everywhere that black Muslims want to rape your ass with a crucifix, this was like a gift of gold, frankincense, and myrrh rolled into one awesome Jesus doobie.

Duffy cranked up the old echo chamber of misplaced priorities and Fox "news" answered back, interviewing Duffy on a couple of its programs. Duffy, raising the drama queen factor to screechy, offered this: "Over the last several years, we have watched militant secularists team up with federal bureaucrats in the effort to sterilize the public square of anything remotely connected to anything religious...This postal manager has clearly received the memo which has led him to stamp out Christmas caroling. But I have my own memo to all the Christmas carolers out there. Let’s not surrender to the secularist version of Christmas future."

That's some impressive button-pushing. "Militant secularists" who "sterilize"? You mean like Hitler or a particularly atheistic veterinarian? And a conspiracy to deny carolers the right to sing about the birth of the Lord, one that comes straight from Obama's filthy Kenyan mouth? Oh, shit, Steve Doocy practically ejaculated all over that ugly couch on Fox and Friends.

How about a little sympathy for the manager of the P.O., who was booed by the patrons, according to Duffy (we haven't heard from anyone else who was there)? Look, it's a shitty time to be a postal worker since it's one of only two or three times of year that people remember, "Oh, yeah, that's right, we actually need a postal service." And Saturdays during the holiday season are a shitty time to go to the post office. How do the Glee-wannabes in Dickens drag singing "Jingle Bells" make it better for anyone? Oh, except for Duffy's daughter, who was apparently traumatized by Obama's jackbooted thugs strangling Santa right in front of her.

The point here ain't whether or not musical trios can entertain the masses who are imprisoned in long lines. The point is that the outrage machine didn't have to get going.

Except, you know, it always does. Right now, there's a bill working its way through the House of Representatives. H.R. 489 expresses "the sense of the House of Representatives that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected for use by those who celebrate Christmas." Because it needs so much protecting. Of course, the new National Defense Authorization Act, passed by the House, would probably result in Jesus being indefinitely detained.

2011-12-13T11:29:00.004-05:00

Ron Paul Ain't Nothin' to Fuck With:
Batshit insane Ron Paul, who, it should be noted, voted against the Martin Luther King holiday, voted for Bill Clinton's impeachment, and was the sole member of the House of Representatives to vote against giving the Congressional Gold Medal to Charles Schulz, is a man who can hold a motherfuckin' grudge. The one he's been nursing with his man-nipples against Newt Gingrich goes back to at least 1996. And that's the reason why he has decided to use the waning days of his ongoing quixotic campaign for president to savage Gingrich with an online and TV ad that paints the former Speaker of the House as a pathetic hypocrite who profited off his position in government.

See, back in 1996, when the Republican-turned-Libertarian-turned-Republican Dr. Paul ran for the House seat from the 14th District in Texas he had given up in 1984, he was in a primary against three other Republicans. One of them was incumbent Congressman Greg Laughlin, who had switched from Democrat to Republican in 1995. Laughlin had been enticed by Speaker Gingrich, who was trying to get a bunch of Democrats to jump ship. He promised Laughlin a seat on the House Ways and Means Committee, which was deliciously tempting.

Newtie was the top of his hubristic, mad power in 1996, spinning out visions of Republican dominance that usually involved him. He punished Republican representatives who hadn't supported his government shutdown by refusing to campaign for them and holding back on NRCC funds. Laughlin had voted with Gingrich, so El Newter decided to double down on Laughlin as a way to show Democrats that they would be safe in their seats if they became turncoats. He campaigned for Laughlin in person, and he got GOP bigwigs like Phil Gramm and various Bushes to do the same. The NRCC, fearing an embarrassing loss for Gingrich, conducted push polls that attacked Paul.

Paul still got into a run-off with Laughlin. And because people in Paul's district are Texans, they were suspicious of Laughlin's party switch (yet, again, being Texans, not Paul's) and all the support from outsiders. Paul won despite more campaigning against him and for Laughlin by Gingrich. Usually, the leadership of a party remains neutral in primaries. Instead, Gingrich stuck his big head in and Paul shoved it up his ass. He used Newt's own words against Laughlin. See, Newt had attacked Laughlin in 1994 for being Bill Clinton's lackey.

So it's payback time. And you can bet that Paul's been waiting a long damn time to throw "hypocrisy" in Gingrich's face again.

They're both nuts. They're just different flavors of nuts. For Paul, there's one guiding principle: "Don't spend any fucking money." That's why he opposes wars. That's why he opposes almost everything, including programs to get teenagers off drugs. For Newt, it's all about centering as much power as possible in himself because he is so right in his rightness. It's a shit fight in a monkey house. And all you can do is watch the feces fly.

(Note: An earlier version of this post said "Congressional Medal of Honor." It was corrected because, as several rude readers pointed out, it was wrong.)

2011-12-12T11:59:00.003-05:00

Other Things We Learned From the Republican Debate on Saturday (Besides Mitt Romney's Poor Betting Choices):
So it was that the Republican candidates who are deemed worthy of attention (which somehow includes Rick Santorum but not John Huntsman or Buddy Roemer, both former governors) held another goddamn debate in goddamn Iowa last night. Goddamn Iowa, we might note, is one of the whitest goddamn states in America, which means it tells us approximately nothing about how nominations or elections are going to go, but its caucus is still honored like some bloated, louche lord of the manor who must be fed peeled grapes by the nude boy children of his subjects.

Yeah, you've all heard about Mitt Romney's stupid-ass offer to bet Rick Perry $10,000 dollars that he was right about something in some damn edition of some fucking book he wrote that he changed later because he's just that way. For the Rude Pundit, it wasn't so much the juvenile amount of the bet and the context of Romney's excessive wealth versus the poverty of the nation. It was that Romney was such a fucking bully about it. Not charming, not having-a-larf, just pushy and assholish. And, yeah, it was a low blow when Gingrich said to Romney, "The only reason you didn't become a career politician is you lost to Teddy Kennedy in 1994." But fuck Romney. The nomination was his to lose and that tool's blown it again and again. And he might have blown it for good on Saturday.

Other horrors in this spectacle of the decline and fall of the Republican party:
1. Benjamin Netanyahu is the greatest living American. And Israel is the most important state in the union. It's the location that got mentioned more than any other (besides the United States), and Romney and Gingrich got into a fight over who's got the longest Bibi: "I've known Bibi since 1984," said Newt. Countered Mitt, "I've also known Bibi Netanyahu for a long time. We worked together at Boston Consulting Group," which was in 1976, so Romney's balling Bibi for nearly a decade longer than Newt.

2. Newt Gingrich can tell the most obvious lies without even blinking. "'Palestinian' did not become a common term until after 1977," he offered porcinely. The New York Times archive would like to disagree over 10,000 times. And for those who say that many of those references are to some people or other who aren't really what we think of now as "Palestinians" and that, as wise and wide Newt has said, they are an "invented people," the Rude Pundit offers this from a May 8, 1921 article titled "Palestine Natives Oppose Zionism," which says that Christians and Muslims from Palestine are seeking "justice for the Palestinians."

Oh, hell. What else do you want to talk about here? Bottom line: Santorum's a creepy idiot who has family values shoved up his ass like spiked beads. Ron Paul is Ron Paul is Ron Paul (even if he seemed like Don Knotts running for president in a kooky movie with a chimp as his running mate). Most frightening, Michele Bachmann actually came across as saner and more in control because, compared with the flailing Romney and the failing Perry, she was (or maybe it was just fun to see her go after Romney and Gingrich).

Mostly, though, there was Romney, who was having a non-stop hissy fit, and Gingrich, who can say the most batshit things, but say them with such calm and poise that he jowl, "Young people oughta learn how to work. Middle class kids do it routinely. We should give poor kids the same chance to pursue happiness," as a call to loosen child labor laws and people will actually applaud. He could say " if we do survive" about a potential battle with Iran and no one will think, "Umm, did you just say you think we're all gonna die?"

Republicans have lost this election before it started. All that matters now is seeing how long Mitt Romney goes before the barely contained rage inside him bursts out. And how long until someone actually listens to exactly what the hell Newt Gingrich believes.

Frankly, President Obama should just ignore these fools and merely campaign on giving him a Congress that wants to accomplish something.

2011-12-09T10:51:00.002-05:00

Rick Perry's "Strong" Ad and Queer Desire:
Republican presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry's latest online ad, titled "Strong," has been much-maligned by the Left without actually understanding it. For what the video actually reveals is deep, unfulfilled queer desire within Perry, a latency that is rendered explicit in Perry's words and actions throughout "Strong."

The first line Perry speaks is the crude giveaway of his true intention. "I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country," he says as Aaron Copland-esque music surges and falls under him. The pun here is clear. "I'm a Christian but/butt" is Perry offering us his complex, repressed identity. He is a Christian, but his "butt" is still a focal point of his manhood. And his admonition "you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday," with its play on the word "pew," is clearly a demonstration that he does not believe in promiscuity, but he does desire anal sex.

In the most misread line of the video, Perry says, "[T]here's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school." You'll notice that Perry does not actually say that gays should not be allowed to serve openly in the military (or, to continue a trope from above, at least in a military "butt"). Continuing with his self-identification as a homosexual Christian male, he merely believes that, in addition to the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, religion should be allowed in public schools.

Further indications are made through Perry's presence and actions in "Strong." As others have pointed out, the Governor is wearing the same jacket as Heath Ledger's character in Brokeback Mountain. Ledger's Ennis was the proverbial "top" in the relationship with Jake Gyllenhall's Jack, and Perry, cloaked in the garments of a fictional gay cowboy, indicates his status when he says, "Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again." He makes a fist and slightly thrusts it forward, offering himself for rough gay male sex. The camera stays coyly just above his crotch so that we may not see whether or not his own words are making him aroused.

Finally, the setting itself is rife with connotations. He is climbing a hill with a river running by it, placing himself in a cleft, a clearing in the forest. The forest is a common setting for gay pornography, so the association is clear: the Governor of Texas wishes to enjoy the pleasures of intercourse with another man in the middle of the woods.

Obviously, "Strong" is a campaign ad meant to appeal to conservatives. But the subtext is an appeal to another voter: the confused Republican who wants to reconcile his religious beliefs with his sexual desires. Perry should be applauded for, in a just-barely coded way, reaching out to this demographic and offering them his empathy and his eager fist. We should be glad that he has revealed this about himself.

For, indeed, perhaps, in response to how badly Rick Perry wants gay sex, one might answer, "He can blow me."

2011-12-08T10:40:00.003-05:00

Plan B, the White House, and The X-Files:
If you think about it, of course HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the FDA's decision to allow the Plan B emergency contraception to be sold over-the-counter with no age restrictions. Can you imagine the Republican ads in 2012? "President Obama thinks it's okay for 13-year old girls to abort their children without parental consent," they'd lie. "Mitt Romney is pretty sure that's wrong." There's an election in less than a year. And your precious science and "facts" and "rights" have no place here.

After the health care debate and its ensuing messaging debacle, where the President and Democrats seemed to forget how to explain anything to anyone without sounding like the keynote speaker at an actuary convention, the White House has avoided speaking out and pushing for anything that doesn't already have majority support or is impossible to turn against Obama. Some of the time, it works out, like raising taxes on the wealthy. Sometimes it doesn't, as with this decision. It's a frankly disgusting and disappointing way to run a government.

The Rude Pundit would bet that some White House insider would say that it was more important to take abortion off the table as an issue in the presidential election, even if Plan B is a contraceptive, not an abortifacient, and, really, the anti-choice yahoos need to make a decision here on whether life begins at conception or at ejaculation. He bets that that insider would tell women of all ages not to worry, that the decision would be changed in a second Obama term, that that's just the way the world works.

The Obama administration now seems like a television series that has lost its plot thread. The Rude Pundit remembers watching The X-Files back in the day, believing that the mysteries and mythology would have a resolution by the end of its run, that the creators of the show knew the arc and knew the conclusion. So you'd get a great episode involving aliens and conspiracies in the government one week. And then the next week you'd get David Duchovny being beaten up by a talking ape. But you stuck with it, thinking that it would all pay off, that your loyalty would be rewarded. Who is the Smoking Man? What is the truth about Mulder's sister? And the twists would be layered on. Oh, what with the chip in Scully's neck? That's intriguing.

Finally, though, call it "jumping the shark" or "nuking the fridge" or whatever cutesy phrase you want, you finally realized that, despite series creator Chris Carter's protestations otherwise, you were being suckered, that there would be no satisfaction at the end, that the only goal was to make more money for Fox TV by staying on the air. The Rude Pundit gave up on the show before it ended, gruesomely and pathetically, in its ninth season. Friends of his, true believers, tried to convince him that he needed to hang in there, that there would be more answers, more moments of satisfaction, but once he was done, he was done.

Yeah, there were some excellent spooky and weird hours along the way. But we were promised answers. Instead, we got Annabelle Gish and Robert Patrick. The Rude Pundit never regretted bailing. He figured he'd just do something more rewarding with his time. (Lost fans can probably relate.)

So it is with the presidency of Barack Obama. Any time you attempt to say that you're sick of the cynical way the White House takes the left for granted, you're given a list of things that Obama has accomplished, as if somehow you were denying that he did those things. Yeah, he did accomplish an overhaul of the health care system that has benefited Americans in ways large and small. Yeah, he did get Osama bin Laden and is, at least to an extent, winding down the Iraq war. Yeah, yeah, fine, fine. But this isn't a case of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately.

The Rude Pundit wants to believe that there's an ideology at work, a path, if you will, to what Obama wants to achieve as a president. And, no matter what you say about Republicans in Congress blocking his way, it seems that, often, even when it's purely executive branch matters, there is no ideology at work, either - just political calculations, as with the Plan B decision, or the continuing concentration of power in the executive, as with indefinite detention and drone assassinations.

When he ran the first time, Obama created a narrative about the nation and its possibilities. That narrative has been abandoned for the sake of expediency, out of fear of the right, with barely any nods towards it anymore. He might say that the exigencies of the contemporary political and economic and foreign policy landscapes have forced changes in the storyline, but that the goal is ultimately the same. We just need to keep believing him. And, c'mon, liberals, what choice do you have?

Chris Carter said that 9/11 was the cause of the end of The X-Files. But it was dead long before the excuse came along because it lost its way for the sake of merely lurching forward.

2011-12-07T11:14:00.003-05:00

President Obama's Latest Big Damn Speech About the Economy: So?:
The Rude Pundit knows, he knows, god, how he knows that he was supposed to sit in his living room and jack off while President Barack Obama gave what was his big ol' speech on "Shared Prosperity and Responsibility." He knows that he was supposed to giddily spank it as Obama went all in-yer-fookin'-gob to the GOP by evoking Teddy Roosevelt and even speaking in the same town where the Big Stick Dude gave his "New Nationalism" speech (probably not softly) back in 1910. He knows he was supposed to ejaculate all over his TV as Obama talked about the rich paying their fair share and Republicans being bags of dicks. He knows he was supposed to have a cigarette when Obama made the point about the 1% earning almost all of the economic gains of "the last few decades."

But you know what? Sorry. He can't. He'd need some high doses of Viagra to just get a fake erection.

For here's what the President actually proposed yesterday: extend the payroll tax reduction, end the Bush tax cuts and limit deductions for the wealthy, make some undefined cuts here and there in the budget, and tell the GOP to stop blocking approval of Richard Cordray for the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

That's it. Oh, sure, sure, Obama said he'd protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Oh, sure, sure, he framed everything with progressive rhetoric about the society over the individual, about the need for greater opportunity in the nation, about wealth not being an end in itself. That was great, but it wasn't that different than his speech back in April that was all about cutting the deficit.

Back then, he even used the language that would be used by Occupy Wall Street: "In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of all working Americans actually declined. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each."

Some on the left were delighted. Robert Reich, who is normally a bit more skeptical about this stuff, was way over-the-top effusive about yesterday's speech: "It lays out the basis for what could be the platform Obama will run on in 2012 — increasing taxes on the rich, investing in the rest us, requiring corporations and Wall Street banks that reap benefits from being in America create good jobs for Americans, and protecting our democracy from being corrupted by money — a new New Nationalism. Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008."

Except that's not what Obama actually said. He didn't suggest requiring jack shit of bailed-out banks. He gave them some polite advice: "At minimum, they should be remedying past mortgage abuses that led to the financial crisis. They should be working to keep responsible homeowners in their home. We’re going to keep pushing them to provide more time for unemployed homeowners to look for work without having to worry about immediately losing their house. The big banks should increase access to refinancing opportunities to borrowers who haven’t yet benefited from historically low interest rates."

You got that? They "should" do things. But Obama is not actually proposing any kind of requirements. So if you're a banker, you can continue to do fuck-all for the economy and thank the President for his note in the suggestion box.

And conservatives are still complaining that it's class warfare. Shit, it's barely a class tickle fight. We could use some motherfuckin' warfare, like, you know, Teddy Roosevelt proposed.

Back in 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came up with a radical plan: Tax the fuck out of the wealthy who earned their money not through labor or services rendered, but through "gambling in stocks." Roosevelt said, "I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective-a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate." Teddy also proposed giving workers rights like minimum wage and regulations for child labor and sanitary conditions.

Look, yeah, yeah, times were different. Yeah, yeah, the President can only do what Congress will allow. But if you're going to spend time laying out a vision of what you'd like the nation to achieve, you should probably be a bit more ambitious in the scope of what you want to accomplish than a slight re-jiggering of taxes and the placement of a good bureaucrat. Howzabout new regulations with real teeth on banking and on the influence of money in politics? Howzabout a massive jobs program based on infrastructure spending and the green economy?

Or perhaps (and this is probably true) we've gotten so used our American inertia that small motions towards progress have become mighty gestures.

2011-12-06T12:18:00.005-05:00

Newt and Callista: A Romance on Film:
Current Republican presidential nomination race leader, former Speaker of the House and entrepreneur, the plump and wretched Newt Gingrich, and his frightening wife, Callista, who is noted for her ability to play the French horn (that's true, by the way), have appeared in a series of films for their for-profit company, Gingrich Productions (which is linked to Gingrich's campaign website, Newt.org, which sounds like a fetish club for amphibianophiles). The odd thing is that in nearly every single one, no matter what the subject, the couple appear side-by-side, Newt screen left, Callista right, as if they are conjoined twins attached at the shoulder:

Here they are in We Have the Power, which is about sucking sweet oil out of the ground.

Here's the loving spouses in Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous With Destiny (which is oddly not about Reagan meeting Satan for his just reward in Hell).

And here they are in Nine Days That Changed the World, about Pope John Paul II's visit to Poland where he molested Lech Walesa's kids and started the Solidarity movement. That's the Vatican in the background, so they got a vacation out of the production.

Oh, this is a serious and spooky one: America at Risk, because, Newt and Callista tell us, the terrorists are a-tryin' to kill us. That might be "Generic City Green Screen Image" behind them.

This one's from the recent City Upon a Hill, which is about how exceptional America is. We're filthy with exceptionalism.

And the Rude Pundit's favorite title: Rediscovering God in America II: Our Heritage. He loves that there was apparently so much more to say after part 1 that a sequel was necessary. It would have been cool to be called "The Goddening."

The point here isn't shitty production values and a for-profit way of conning conservatives out of cash. No, it's that all of these are funded by Citizens United. You know, the Citizens United that went to the Supreme Court and got corporations declared people who could spend unlimited amounts of unlimited donations from unlimited anonymous sources to created unlimited issue ads that more or less support specific candidates, like their employee, Newt Gingrich.

Well, at least Newt and Callista are camera ready. They even know their marks.

2011-12-05T13:20:00.002-05:00

Cain in Vain:
So it was on Saturday that the Rude Pundit awoke and sat down on the couch with a bowl of cereal and a big ass mug of coffee. He turned on the TV and saw that the MSNBC was showing The House on Murder Mountain, and, really, with a title like that, it didn't matter what it was about. It could have been Care Bear furry snuff porn. He was going to watch. But, no, there would be no house, no murder, no mountain.

Instead, he was greeted by race traitor Alveda King, niece of MLK himself, talking about something worthless in front of a crowd in Atlanta. It was time, anchor Alex Witt told us, for Herman Cain to announce whether or not he was going to continue his campaign in the wake of a series of sexual allegations wherein the lobbyist and inspirational speaker either fucked or tried to fuck various women. But first we had to hear Michael D. Steele, the Army colonel who was reprimanded for giving orders that resulted in the deaths of Iraqi civilians. So, yeah. He barked at us about doing the Pledge of Allegiance like we mean it, not like we're a bunch of pussies who don't gun down unarmed civilians.

Then Cain, dragging his poor wife, Gloria, with him, walked up to the dais in shades, and, well, hell, you know what happened next. A few random observations here:

- Cain said, "The pundits would like for me to shut up, drop out, and go away." Speaking for pundits everywhere, are you fucking kidding? It's people like Herman Cain who make our jobs easier. Got nothing to write about? Huh. What crazy shit did Herman Cain say yesterday? That well is dry now.

- He also said, "[W]e know that those false and unproved allegations are not true." Umm, "unproved" means that there's a chance they could be proved. Just sayin'.

- Essentially, all Cain said was "Those women are liars and to prove it, I'm quitting my campaign. Kiss Herman Cain's ass and buy his book. Cain forever."

- One other note to all of the people who supported Cain and the "pundits" who proclaimed him the best, most authentic candidate who can beat Barack Obama, especially those made a big deal about his race: If your candidate says the word "Pokemon," not as a joke but as a source for a quote-worthy "poem," in his speech where he's quitting his campaign, he not only was never that serious a candidate, he wasn't that serious a grown-up.

Adios, Herman Cain. Your campaign was a success: You've lined up enough rubes who'll pay to see your egress to keep you rich the rest of your life.

Note: Everything you need to know about Herman Cain can be gleaned from a Godfather's Pizza commercial from 1988, when Cain was CEO, wherein a black guy tries to tell everyone he's exactly like the old white guy next to him.

2011-12-05T12:42:00.003-05:00

The Most Elitist, Idiotic Paragraph You'll See This Week in a Major Newspaper:
Just for a quick hit of pure, sadistic glee, the Rude Pundit is sharing this one paragraph from the latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "the numbingly stupid rantings of someone Glenn Beck finds credible") by oh-so-sassy, neo-Coulter S.E. Cupp in the New York Daily News:

"If you’ve spent any time in the American South (I began this week in North Carolina, incidentally), you know it’s a land where your picture is made and not taken, Auburn is a religion and not a color and there are no problems that a little sweet tea and barbecued ribs can’t solve. I will not argue the last point."

Where is this fantasy place, this South-Land amusement park? And what was the whole "column" about? Who the fuck cares? Once you've written something so unbearably patronizing and smugly elitist, like a Victorian anthropologist delighted with the time spent with the wogs, you have lost any shred of credibility on anything.

(One other thing - and, yeah, sometimes meaningless shit sticks in the Rude Pundit's craw: that last sentence, "I will not argue the last point." Sarah, Sarah, you're the one making the initial assertion. If you might argue with it, why the fuck make it in the first place? And the assumption is that if you make a point, you're not gonna dispute it immediately. Apparently, "editing" is not really something the editors at the Daily News do.)

Okay, seriously, back in a few with Cain.

2011-12-05T10:23:00.002-05:00

Late Birthday Post Today:
The Rude Pundit is probably already drunk as he celebrates his birthday. Later, there will be ecstasy, there will be dwarves, there will be implements of various and sordid uses, there will be at least one animal sacrifice (well, at least one grilled). Back later with a few final jabs at Herman Cain.

2011-12-03T10:58:00.000-05:00

Guest Post: On Occupy Supply by Brian Sonenstein at Firedoglake:
(Bumped to the top for the weekend)
At Firedoglake, our network of member volunteers started a project to help the Occupy Movement survive the winter. It started as a road trip with FDL Dissenter reporter Kevin Gosztola visiting different occupations across the Midwest, delivering cold weather supplies to the protesters he met along the way. We raised money for the road trip as part of a campaign we called the Occupy Supply Fund, and committed 100% of the donations to buying and delivering supplies to the protesters and occupations who needed them most.

It was an immediate success, and the occupations Kevin visited were very grateful for the help. But we knew that Kevin would never make it to enough occupations before winter to make a real impact, and our members and activists wanted very much to help. Here at The Rude Pundit, the Blanket the Earth campaign you all have organized is providing a beautiful and important structure for folks to donate their secondhand and store-bought goods to their local occupations. At FDL, we took a slightly different tact, deciding the most efficient thing we could do as a community with our time and resources was to buy as much regionally- and union-made cold weather gear as possible -- from jackets and hats to sleeping bags and generators -- and immediately ship them out to protests across the country.

We got to work. Our founder Jane Hamsher assumed what turned out to be the unfortunately Herculean task of sourcing regional, American and Union made cold weather clothing from what remains of the American textile industry. It was a truly eye-opening experience, and as Jane wrote at FDL:

"It was not an easy task to source all of these union suppliers, and it was extraordinarily depressing. The garment manufacturing industry in the United States has been decimated by NAFTA. Link after link to once thriving union shops were dead, even in the past few years. They went out of business. They were gobbled up and gutted, or the jobs went overseas. Or both.

"Which leads right back to Occupy Wall Street. As American manufacturing goes, so goes the American middle class — which was built on manufacturing jobs. 'Decline' is too delicate of a word to describe what happened. American manufacturing and the middle class economic stability that went with it were sabotaged by cooperation between leaders of both political parties."

The Occupy Supply fund is not only supporting the occupy protesters, but we’re putting our money where our mouths are, and using our purchasing power to support American manufacturing jobs, fair wages, and full benefits.

The next challenge was to develop a network to get this stuff out there, because we didn’t just want to ship boxes of supplies to the occupations -- we wanted to show up and let the protesters see some of the faces of the people who are working hard to support them. So we tapped our members to volunteer as what we call Occupy Supply Liaisons.

These Liaisons are the kind souls who visit occupations regularly, talking to and establishing relationships with protesters, keeping tabs of the size of their encampments and the issues affecting them, compiling requests for supplies and working directly with the fund to receive shipments and deliver them back at camp. Our goal is to have liaisons create lasting relationships with occupations so we can continue to help them long after the winter.

We now have Liaisons in over 40 states across the country, and in some place multiple liaisons working together at a single occupation. Our shipments have begun to arrive over the past week and my colleague Ryan Cook has been working frantically sending shipments out of Jane’s basement each day.

In just over a month, the Occupy Supply fund has raised an incredible $140,000, of which we’ve spent over $82,000 solely on supplies - and we are constantly updating our stock to meet the various needs of the protesters. We’ve bought jackets, hats, base layers, sleeping bags, tents, generators, Tiny Homes, foodstuffs, and so much more -- and all of this has been and continues to be personally delivered by dedicated, passionate FDL volunteers.

And on Monday we launched our next stage of the project to give folks another way to show their support and aid the occupations: the Occupy Supply store. For every item you buy, we’ll match it with a donation of the same item to an occupier in need. Every item in our store is Union made in the USA.

We are so pleased with the enthusiasm we have seen so far for helping this important protest against greed and inequality. I hope you will check out the Occupy Supply fund and support our efforts to prepare the protesters for winter alongside the wonderful work you are all doing here.

2011-12-02T13:54:00.003-05:00

Photos to Remind You About That Thing Going On in Afghanistan:
SFC Benari Poulten, who you should follow on the Twitter machine, sent these pictures from Howz-e Madad, which, according to Google Earth, is approximately on the ass crack of nowhere in Afghanistan.

Poulten, who Jon Stewart dubbed "GI Jew" and who calls himself "America's most adorable soldier," said that "we helped open a new school, police station, and medical clinic." (Your objection that we need schools, police stations, and medical clinics paid for by the federal government right here in the USA is duly noted and appreciated.)

And here's your happy foreign children, with remarkably good teeth, smiling for the camera.

The Rude Pundit doesn't put this up here for any kind of "balance" or some such shit. He wants this war over now and Benari and all the troops home. It's just that reality is always complicated. And for all the bad that we've done in Afghanistan, we're still trying to do bits of good and those bits of good actually do help some of the people we've harmed.

2011-12-02T10:54:00.003-05:00

Updates and Corrections: Dickweeds, Penises, and Jeff Sessions:
Correction: Earlier this week, the Rude Pundit said that "Herman Cain really likes to bang (or try to bang) white women." Apparently, Ginger White, with whom Cain allegedly had a 13-year affair, is, despite her deceptive name, black. So Herman Cain's penis knows no racial prejudice. He is, however, a scumsucking corporate piggy, no matter what his penis has done.

Clarification: Several sources said that Ann Coulter was bleeped on Morning Joe on MSNBC on Monday because she called John McCain a "douchebag." She has clarified that, in fact, she called him a "dickweed." What has not been clarified is why Ann Coulter, who this week wrote, for the 8 billionth time, about Bill Clinton and Paula Jones, is considered relevant in any conversation.

Update: Amendment 1274 to the National Defense Authorization Act, proposed by Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, failed last night by a 41-59 vote. The amendment said that, if you're an enemy combatant that wins some kind of lottery and actually gets a trial, your potential acquittal does not mean you will be freed. Apparently, the Senate decided that other language in the bill that says someone can be held forever covered it. The bill itself passed 93-7.

Oh, and here's the Rude Pundit on Monday's Stephanie Miller Show:

Podcast Powered By Podbean

2011-12-01T15:08:00.003-05:00

Other Skeevy Shit in the National Defense Authorization Act:
Oh, sure, sure, the Senate's codifying the detention and denial of habeas corpus that's been going on, with the added bonus that, in addition to killing the fuck out of Americans, the President can say, "Yeah, you're an enemy combatant. Welcome to Gitmo." To his credit, Barack Obama has said, "Umm, no," and threatened a veto, although that probably has more to do with allowing some kind of congressional involvement than anything we might think of as moral qualms.

But the NDAA is bursting with skeevy shit, in the debate and non-debate that's gone on.

There's Alabama's Jeff Sessions' Amendment 1274, still up for a vote, which says, according to Sessions, "an unlawful combatant or a combatant who is held by the U.S. military for being an enemy of the United States, a combatant against the United States, or an unlawful combatant, is not therefore entitled to be released if the U.S. military or the civilian courts choose to prosecute him and he is acquitted or after he serves his sentence but before hostilities have ended." You got that? Even if we've held someone for years in legal suspended animation, if that prisoner should actually get some kind of trial and if, with all the rules being against him, he happens to get acquitted, he'll still be stuck in custody until he dies or the war ends, which it never will. Call this the "we're such pussies in America" rule.

This led to South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, who has had a such a boner for detention without charge or trial that it's practically slapping John McCain in the face, to say, "[I]f you take the ability to hold someone as an enemy combatant off the table, you cannot interrogate them for intelligence-gathering purposes, and if you put a time limit on how long you can hold them, you defeat the purpose of gathering intelligence." You might think that someone held for a decade would have no useful intelligence left and could possibly be set free, if he's acquitted in a, you know, fair trial. But you'd be a traitor who wants the two remaining al-Qaeda members to fuck your dog and gut your daughters.

Of course, yea or nay, at least Sessions' amendment got debated. The same can't be said for Amendment 1120. That said that women in the military who get pregnant by rape can have their abortions paid for by the military. New Hampshire Democrat Janine Shaheen introduced it, and, because there were important things to be passed, like the aforementioned Christmas Tree Week, 1120 got designated as "non-germane." Apparently, a defense funding bill is not the place to discuss the funds of soldiers.

Oh, yeah, that and making sure that military chaplains don't have to perform marriage ceremonies for the gays. That passed. The House version of the NDAA specifically banned chaplains from doing the deed. The Senate version just says that it's up to the chaplain. Actually, it's kind of funny. It just says that any chaplain "who as a matter of conscience or moral principle does not wish to perform a marriage, may not be required to do so," which means that Father Mulcahy could say, "Fuck you, Klinger. I think marrying Koreans is icky." By the way, this amendment was proposed by some who-the-fuck-cares-what-his-name-is Mississippi senator, thus completing this blog post's trifecta of shitbag southern Republicans.

So a fun clusterfuck of culture wars and legal wars while still funding, without question or clarity, the war wars.

2011-12-01T12:48:00.002-05:00

Late Post Today, But Enjoy Your Senate at Work:
This is a real thing the Senate did yesterday in-between debating whether or not you can be held without trial if the President says so until every eeevil Mooslim is daid:

"Mr. MERKLEY (for himself, Mr. Burr, Ms. Snowe, Mr. Wyden, Mrs. Murray, Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Casey, Ms. Cantwell and Ms. Collins) submitted the following resolution; which was considered and agreed to:

S. Res. 341

Whereas Christmas trees are grown in all 50 States;

Whereas Christmas trees have been sold commercially in the United States since about 1850;

Whereas Edward Johnson, assistant to Thomas Edison, came up with the idea of electric lights for Christmas trees in 1882;

Whereas President Calvin Coolidge started the National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony on the White House lawn in 1923;

Whereas there are close to 15,000 farms growing Christmas trees in the United States;

Whereas there are approximately 100,000 people employed full or part-time in the Christmas tree industry;

Whereas Christmas tree farms in the United States planted approximately 35,000,000 Christmas trees in 2011 to replace those harvested in 2010; and

Whereas growing Christmas trees preserves green space and small family-owned farms, provides habitats for wildlife, and sequesters carbon dioxide: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Senate--

(1) designates the first full week of December in 2011 as 'National Christmas Tree Week';

(2) encourages the celebration of Christmas trees during that week;

(3) recognizes the role Christmas trees have played in the history of the United States;

(4) reaffirms the environmental benefits of Christmas tree farms and recycled Christmas trees;

(5) encourages the recycling of Christmas trees after the holiday season; and

(6) celebrates the joy Christmas trees bring to families across the United States."

You'll notice that it does not mention God. It passed without objection.

Back in a bit with more combatant rudeness.

2011-11-30T13:00:00.001-05:00

The End of the Occupy Camps Is the Start of the Next Phase:
Last night, in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, the police moved in by the hundreds to clear out the Occupy encampments. In L.A., Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa used the tiredest excuse of them all: think about the children. In a city with at least 13,500 homeless kids (and that's just the ones that show up at schools), L.A. probably could have spent the money it used for the 1400 cops and 200 arrests at the City Hall camp on, say, housing some of the kids who don't want to be on the streets.

You can bet that we'll be hearing about more crackdowns as the winter progresses, until almost all the camps are gone. And to that, the Rude Pundit says, "Finally."

Don't get him wrong. He fully supports the occupiers and their colonization of urban spaces, the footholds of American renewal. He even understands why defending the camps has become so important. For some, whether fresh-faced, middle-class college student or unemployed middle-aged homeless person, the camps are a taste of what power and democracy are like. They are a small victory in a concrete swamp of constant indignity and degradation. Smelly, ugly, and full of sloppy dissent, the Rude Pundit thought they were beautiful. It's why he wanted and still wants people to donate stuff to the remaining encampments. If they're gonna stay, then he wants these hippie harbingers of the future fight to be safe and warm.

But the camps need to be seen for what they are and what they've accomplished: they had to come into being in order to show that there are large numbers of people willing to put their bodies on the line for a cause. They needed to remind us that the public square is not virtual and that civic engagement in the real world is necessary and vital for the reclamation of the country. That has been done. But right now the media is focusing too much on the camps as symbols and their eviction as a loss, with some even portraying the evictions as a victory over an ill-prepared, misguided, easily-mocked group of anarchists and leeches. Don't let the fuckers have the victory. Don't let them take back the narrative.

Of course the occupations have to be destroyed by the police. That was the point, wasn't it? Draw out the authorities. Get them to respond to your actions. Transform yourself into beings with your own agency, no longer objects to be acted upon. And how does that not bait the ones with the batons and the pepper spray and the ones who order them to attack?

The Rude Pundit doesn't mourn the end of the encampments in the same way he didn't mourn moving from teenage years to adulthood. Now we've seen that action is possible, that community is possible, that mass public support is possible. It's time to move to targeted direct action, and, no, that doesn't mean supporting candidates for election. That's bullshit co-opting and dilution of the movement. Leave that to Occupy Wall Street's sympathizers. It means direct confrontation, like the new effort to stop foreclosures from occurring. (The Rude Pundit will be out there next Tuesday.)

And it means that Adbusters had it right when it declared, in the heated environment after New York was shut down, "We will turn this winter into a training ground for precision disruptions – flashmobs, stink bombs, edgy theatrics – against the megacorps and the unrepentant 1%, a festival of resistance in the snow with, or without, an encampment that'll lay the tactical foundation for our Spring Offensive."

While we need to take care of the outdoor occupiers, we cannot cling to slivers of land when we have a nation to take back.

2011-11-30T11:41:00.002-05:00

Late Post Today:
Shredder's got a mutant army ready to attack. Time to put on the shell and take that bastard down. Back later with more aberrant rudeness.

2011-11-29T11:27:00.002-05:00

A Brief List of Obvious Things That Should Be Obvious:
1. Today's New York Times contains an editorial titled "Reporting Abuse" that says, in essence, "Hey, if you catch a grown-up fucking a child, you gotta tell the police." For some reason, when it comes to college coaches (or, you know, priests), this simple, obvious action has to be explained. So, to be clear, if you know someone's fucking a kid, don't tell your coach. Don't tell your administrator. Tell the cops. If you need this explained to you more than once, you should be arrested, too.

2. If you invite Ann Coulter onto your nice TV show, she will act cunty. On Morning Starbucks today, Coulter, who had been invited on by smug host Joe Scarborough over an exchange on Twitter, was bleeped out for calling John McCain a "douchebag" (he's more of a colostomy bag, so the edit's understandable). And then she called Ted Kennedy a "human pestilence," which led Team Joe to spend a great deal of time, post-cunt, praising and fluffing the reputation of Kennedy. Remember: A good 90% of Coulter's material comes from dissing Ted Kennedy.

3. Really? The right-wing psycho who killed 77 people in a Norway shooting spree is actually a psycho? Huh. Go figure.

4. Herman Cain really likes to bang (or try to bang) white women. The obvious thing here: wait, you mean a skeevy lobbyist and poisonous food hawker turned out to be a skeevy human being? How could we even think about not electing him president? Oh, and he's thinking of getting out of the campaign now. Just two days too late. Extra bonus humor points: Cain's lawyer saying that "No individual...should be questioned about his or her private sexual life." What country has he been living in?

5. If you're a cop and you're in hot pursuit of an old man on a bicycle who, at best, might be a little drunk, don't tase him. Just, you know, don't.

The sad part is how long this post could go on. Really? The Federal Reserve made secret deals with banks that allowed them to make billions of dollars with taxpayer bailout money? Really? We're gonna keep learning what an execrable scumfucker Rupert Murdoch and his employees are?

It'd be nice, every now and then, to just be pleasantly surprised that someone you wouldn't expect behaved with honor.

2011-11-28T21:46:00.007-05:00

We Came, We Conversed, We Blanketed:
Small gestures of kindness are not worthless. Around the nation, rude readers used Black Friday (or other Thanksgiving weekend days) to avoid the pepper-spraying rioters at Wal-Mart and instead brought blankets and sweaters and hoodies and food to their local occupations in an effort called "Blanket the Earth." Here's a few of the activities and sites:

From the tireless Denise Wirtz, who organized people for Occupy Atlanta.

From Becki in Austin with Bonnie and Karen, fellow BtE activists. Don't laugh. It gets cold at night.

From Sylvia Martin, who was one of several people who dropped off items in Boston.

The Rude Pundit, Nielsen Hayden, and others dropped off clothes and more in Zuccotti Park, NYC, where we were thanked by the human mike. The items were being handed out before we even left the metal barricaded area, more a hippie zoo than a protest site now. The action is elsewhere. The city is the occupation site now.

Other people showed up throughout the weekend in DC, Sacramento, Des Moines, and elsewhere, literally coast to coast, and in Vancouver, BC. It was an international effort to give aid and comfort to the occupiers.

Thanks to everyone who brought stuff and everyone who engaged with the occupiers, even as we enter what might become a post-encampment strategy.

2011-11-28T10:30:00.003-05:00

Newt Gingrich Is Nothing You Want Him To Be:
First off, someone oughta point out that the Manchester Union-Leader, New Hampshire's largest daily newspaper (which means it has ten readers), is a shitty conservative rag that makes the Washington Times look erudite. Today's top news includes a warning that says, no, really, "Commuters should take it slow today since New Hampshire State Police will be out in force targeting aggressive and distracted drivers during heavy commuting hours" and crimes that involve a purse-snatcher and a crack whore, not to mention the safe return of an elderly woman who wandered away from her nursing home. This is not to belittle the snow-burdened people of the...what the fuck are you? The beaver state? The Show Me state? Live Free or Suck a Dick?...whatever...but, surely, a real newspaper would report on more than randomly lost old people and how super-great right-wingers are.

Granite state, right? Yeah, that's it. Anyways...

Also today, in a way-too-symbolic article, the paper talks about an "invasion" of feral swine in the state, which dovetails nicely with its endorsement of Newt Gingrich for president.

In its editorial supporting the former Speaker of the House, the Union-Leader says, "The pigs are between 100 and 300 pounds with rough hair, tusks and rapier-sharp teeth...They are difficult to hunt, wily, and 'ornery animals you don’t want to fool with,'" and "'We are concerned about their presence' primarily for ecological reasons."

Actually, that makes more sense in discussing Gingrich than what the editors actually wrote: "A lot of candidates say they're going to improve Washington. Newt Gingrich has actually done that." That's like saying that Godzilla was responsible for a great deal of urban renewal in Tokyo. Gingrich is one of the primary reasons that Washington sucks so hard and that Congress has become a worthless clusterfuck that actually works against the good of the nation. He teed it all up.

In October 1995, Gingrich told an audience at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University that if Democrats and the President don't agree to his budget plan, "fine, they won't have any money to run the parts of the Government they like, and we'll see what happens." He wanted Medicare to "wither on the vine." He blamed liberals for everything from Columbine to Susan Smith's drowning of her children. The fucking government shut down because of him. But, hey, sure, yeah, he improved the place.

Have fun, supposedly rational, realistic conservatives who are thrilled at the Gingrich surge. Not only is he an amoral, corrupt, faux-intellectual who windbags his way around the nation, but he also believes in science and technology. He wanted more government spending on medical technology for information-sharing. He actually think science education based on, you know, science is a good thing.

When, now, he hedges on whether or not he believes in evolution, it'll be awesome when Michele Bachmann trots out this 2006 quote from a Discover magazine interview: "Evolution certainly seems to express the closest understanding we can now have [about how we came to be]." Or this one: "I believe evolution should be taught as science, and intelligent design should be taught as philosophy." Or, on another hot-button topic, "I would not seek to ban research on stem cells in fertility clinics." Or "Unlike right-wingers who would say, 'Since we don't know 100 percent for sure, we can keep carbon loading,' I'd say there is enough evidence that it's reasonable to try to move toward renewables, to try to move toward conservation, to try to move toward a hydrogen economy."

Sure, he says the opposite now. But have fun convincing the Iowa and South Carolina and, yes, New Hampshire yahoos that Gingrich is on their side.

By the way, the wild boars are not native to New Hampshire. But hunters so want to hunt them that they've been illegally imported from Tennessee and Georgia and elsewhere. The problem is that once the Southern pigs get in, they multiply and destroy everything they can get their tusks on.

2011-11-25T09:45:00.002-05:00

Blanketing the Occupiers Today:
The Rude Pundit will be at Zuccotti Park at 2 p.m. today under the big red metal sculpture (or, you know, Joie de Vivre by Mark di Suvero). If there's a group meeting going on there, he'll be next to it. He'll have a garbage bag of sweaters and gloves and such.

Let the Rude Pundit know if you did head out today to donate cold weather gear to your local Occupy site. Some readers have already done so. And take a picture or two to send in to this blog. Some of 'em will be posted here or on Facebook.

Austin at 2 p.m. looks like it's gonna be a party of blanketeers, as will Atlanta from 3-6 p.m. Get all your info to see if there's a gathering in your town. And if you're on your own, enjoy the fall day at the occupation.

On Monday, your regularly-scheduled rudeness will return.

But for today, let's do a small, good thing for the protesters we've celebrated for the last two and a half months. Thanks to all who have worked hard so far. And to all who turn out.

2011-11-24T22:02:00.000-05:00

Finalizing Plans for Friday's Blanket the Earth Donations (Update):
(Bumping this up to the top of the page. Let the Rude Pundit know if you're participating.)

The Rude Pundit has been getting the word out in every venue he can over your internets. This Friday, a Black one, we've been told, he wants people to head down to their local Occupy (name of your city) site, should there still be one, and donate cold weather gear (blankets, sweaters, gloves, you know, the usual things) or anything to help those encamped and those holding outdoor protests make it through the quickly coming winter. The idea has been for it to not simply be donations, but for people to go to the Occupy groups to show support.

He appreciates all those who have chimed in that they're going to do so. Some are more organized than others, as is the way with we on the left.

Here's a few definite meet-up times and places:
Atlanta: Meet at Woodruff Park (aka "Troy Davis Park") from 3-6 p.m. to gather any donated items. At 6 p.m., head over to Occupy Atlanta to make the donation. (Thanks to the awesome Denise at Pros/e/yes for her organizing.)

Austin: Meet at City Hall at 2 p.m. (Thanks to Beckinham.)

Boston: Meet a green-jacketed woman with plastic bins, in front of South Station at 9 a.m. (Thanks, Sylvia. And if anyone wants to organize a later time, let us know.)

Washington, DC: Meet at 2 p.m. at the southeast corner of Freedom Square, by 13th and Pennsylvania before heading to Occupy DC. (Thanks to also awesome Violetta.)

New York City: Meet the Rude Pundit at the red metal sculpture at the southeast corner of Zuccotti Park at 2 p.m. and, since the donation tent is no more, we'll head down to 52 Broadway, where there's a stockpile of donated goods. (Drop a line if you're gonna meet up in NYC.)

Others from Los Angeles, Chicago, Chapel Hill, Pocatello, and elsewhere have said they are heading to donate. There are even some groups doing so. If any of them are reading, come up with a time and place and send it to rudepundit_at_yahoo.com so the Rude Pundit can post it here and at the BtE Facebook page and Twitter. Remember: "organizing" can be as simple as saying, "Hey, why don't we meet here?" Do not fear it.

Let's be honest: there's a chance you may be flying solo on this in your town. That's okay. And there's a chance that the numbers will dwindle to zero at the encampments by the dead of winter (or be raided and broken up). That's okay, too. Places like Chicago, Detroit, and NYC have ongoing actions without camps. What the Rude Pundit wants to accomplish is, yes, the aid and comfort provided by some nice wool socks. But it's also a physical demonstration that the occupations are just one part of a movement that spreads far beyond the parks and lawns where protesters are camped.

Actions are loud, man. Way louder than anything we tap, tap, tap out on our laptops.

(Note: take pics of your BtE action and they'll be tossed up on the blog this weekend. Also, later today, he'll have a complete list of contacts at Facebook.)

2011-11-24T10:50:00.003-05:00

A Dark Poem from the Conquered for Thanksgiving in Desperate Times:
A piece of the poem "[Long Time Gone]" by Leslie Marmon Silko, who is a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe. In order to win a contest in ancient times in America about who has the greatest powers, a witch doesn't cast spells or conjure. She tells the future to witches from all the native tribes:

Okay
go ahead
laugh if you want to
but as I tell the story
it will begin to happen.

Set in motion now
set in motion by our witchery
to work for us.

Caves across the ocean
in caves of dark hills
white skin people
like the belly of a fish
covered with hair.

Then they grow away from the earth
then they grow away from the sun
then they grow away from the plants and animals.
They see no life
When they look
they see only objects.
The world is a dead thing for them
the trees and rivers are not alive
the mountains and stones are not alive.
The deer and the bear are objects
They see no life.
They fear
They fear the world.
They destroy what they fear.
They fear themselves.

The wind will blow them across the ocean
thousands of them in giant boats
swarming like larva
out of a crushed ant hill.

They will carry objects
which can shoot death
faster than the eye can see.

They will kill the things they fear
all the animals
the people will starve.

They will poison the water
they will spin the water away
and there will be drought
the people will starve.

They will fear what they find
They will fear the people
They will kill what they fear.

Entire villages will be wiped out
They will slaughter whole tribes.
Corpses for us
Blood for us
Killing killing killing killing

And those they do not kill
will die anyway
at the destruction they see
at the loss
at the loss of the children
the loss will destroy the rest.

Stolen rivers and mountains
the stolen land will eat their hearts
and jerk their mouths from the Mother.
The people will starve.

They will bring terrible diseases
the people have never known.
Entire tribes will die out
covered with festering sores...
vomiting blood.
Corpses for our work

Set in motion now
set in motion by our witchery
set in motion
to work for us

They will take this world from ocean to ocean
they will turn on each other
they will destroy each other
Up here
in these hills
they will find the rocks,
rocks with veins of green and yellow and black.
They will lay the final pattern with these rocks
they will lay it across the world
and explode everything.

Set in motion now
set in motion
To destroy
To kill
Objects to work for us
objects to act for us
Performing the witchery
for suffering
for torment
for the stillborn
the deformed
the sterile
the dead.

Whirling
Whirling
Whirling
Whirling
set into motion now
set into motion.

2011-11-22T11:19:00.004-05:00

The Super-Duper Committee Fails to Fuck Up the Economy Even Worse:
So what the fuck was that, that congressional Supercommittee bullshit? Was it just, as Jonathan Chait says, a beard for President Obama and John Boehner so that they could maintain the appearance of being action stars to their bases while still secretly buggering Keynesians behind the Capitol? (No, that doesn't make actual sense, but it's funny, so go with it.)

It was never gonna succeed in doing anything for one simple reason and one simple reason alone: Republicans just don't give a fuck. If you believe, as Republicans do, that it's better to cut Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and education and the environment and food safety than to raise taxes a little on the rich, then you don't give a fuck. If you believe that a compromise that gives you nearly every cut you want but still raises taxes just a smidgen is a capitulation to liberal/socialist/satanic goals, then you not only don't give a fuck, you are a sociopath.

So now, as it was designed, the sequestering occurs, with cuts in social programs, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, and, heavens to Betsy, defense budget cuts, all because Republicans can't, can't, can't, no-way, no-how raise a fuckin' penny on revenue. The best we can say is, "Well, at least the Democrats didn't make a deal that fucks things up even worse."

(And let's not toast defense budget cuts too much, unless you've got an idea for all the jobs that'll be lost there. The Rude Pundit can't make the leap to say that the family of the guy who cleans the toilets at Raytheon should go hungry just because his work prevents weapons makers from getting e.Coli.)

That's some fuckin' pledge that Grover Norquist made with nearly every Republican; it must have been signed in blood and accompanied by a photo of each signing Congress person with Norquist's cock in their mouth, just to be safe. By the way, you wanna talk about people who don't give a fuck? The Rude Pundit's faced Norquist, talked to him even, looked into his dark eyes, and that bastard is all cold evil, through and through, totally and utterly unflappable. If a Congressman crosses him, you can bet that Norquist is gonna appear at the foot of his bed with a razor and a smile.

So the supercommittee failed. We knew that was gonna happen the second the debt ceiling deal was made. And now we can say, pretty damn assuredly, that the defense cuts won't happen. Because they won't. Because someone's gotta have some courage at some point for it to happen, and (non-Bernie Sanders) courage is in short supply as we descend into the ever-looming election season, which is now every season.

2011-11-21T11:48:00.004-05:00

Nonviolent Protests in America Now and Then: Same as It Ever Was:

(Picture 1 from UC Davis newspaper of events on last Friday. Picture 2 from Birmingham, Alabama in 1963.)

2011-11-18T11:47:00.002-05:00

New Rude Video: Occupy Wall Street and the NYPD, November 15, 2011:

This is from shaky-cam video the Rude Pundit took on the day after Bloomberg's goons wrecked the Zuccotti Park encampment. He went from Canal and 6th back to Zuccotti Park, accompanied by cops every step of the way.

It's also pretty clear evidence as to why yesterday's turnout was so huge for various actions, especially the over 30,000 who took part in the Foley Square/Brooklyn Bridge march (and that's from the NYPD, not OWS - so suck on that, Tea Party number fluffers).

Remember: the Occupy protesters in your town are gonna need your help this winter. Blanket the Earth, the Rude Pundit's action for November 25, will hopefully provide some relief for the ones brave enough to try to last out the winter in places like Albany and Boise.

(And if you are organizing a donation for your local Occupation on Black Friday, let the Rude Pundit know where you're doing it so that he can announce so others may join you. Let's snowball this thing before, you know, the snowballs fly.)

2011-11-17T13:54:00.004-05:00

This Is Not Your Fucking Movement; This Is Our Fucking Movement:
Let's be honest here: the march this morning to shut down Wall Street was useless if its goal was to, well, shut down Wall Street. The New York Stock Exchange is, more or less, a show. Multi-million dollar financial transactions are not done by crazy, sweaty guys on a loud, chaotic floor. They're done digitally. So whether or not the secretaries and junior fuckbag executives and janitors got into work didn't stop a single transfer of funds from one rich asshole to another. It pissed off some people and got the cops more overtime.

But, as ever, as ever, since it's started, everyone, from The Daily Show to Diane Rehm, right, left, and middle, has insisted that Occupy Wall Street conform to some readily defined paradigm of what a protest movement needs to be. Essentially, they are echoing something that Karl Rove drooled out the other day when he asked protesters at a speech he giving at Johns Hopkins University, "Who gave you the right to occupy America?" The real question is "Who took that right away?"

We are just two months into this. Two fucking months after sucking up the shit given to us from the right for years. Two fucking months after being part of the movement that propelled Obama into the presidency, only to see that movement dissolved and dissipated. Two fucking months after watching two years of Tea Party bullshit being flaunted in our faces as if it represented anything but the height of corporate and conservative cynicism and manipulation.

We are two months into this and everyone in the media is clamoring for closure. It took years for the civil rights movement to get laws changed. It took years for the anti-Vietnam War movement to get through the thick skulls of the majority of Americans. This is just starting. Welcome to the real occupation.

Right now, the whole Occupy Wall Street narrative arc is following a well-worn script: defiance of authority followed by a crackdown by the agents of the authority. The corrupt, illegal power of the police and the governments of New York, Oakland, and elsewhere has been on display, with the raid on Zuccotti Park and on encampments around the country, as well as attacks on media members from the right, left, and middle.

The march this morning wasn't going to do anything, despite the hopeful rumors that the stock market opening bell had been delayed (it wasn't). No, the point was, like the rallies for Obama before them, that there is power in numbers. And that power needs to be exhibited and enacted.

When the Supreme Court, in the Citizens United decision, said that corporations are people with First Amendment rights and affirmed that money is the equivalent of speech, it essentially was saying that some people have more speech than others. The wealthy and the corporations can never be matched in terms of the speech effect of their dollars. But they can be matched and overcome by the sheer volume of people. That's why we say we are the 99%.

2011-11-16T11:11:00.007-05:00

Long Live the Occupation (With or Without Occupying) Updated and Updated Again:
The bastards may have taken down Oakland, Portland, New York City, and other occupations in what is increasingly clear was a coordinated attack on the movement by city halls and, perhaps, really, the Department of Homeland Security. But fuck them. There's still many, many OWS protests around the nation, sea to shining motherfuckin' sea.

The following Occupy encampments, big and small, are still going strong, according to a Facebook request put out by the Rude Pundit (this list is inevitably going to be incomplete - feel free to write so it can be updated, which it will be throughout the day):

Asheville
Atlanta
Austin
Baltimore
Birmingham, Alabama
Boise (really? Cool...)
Boston
Buffalo
Charlotte
Columbia, South Carolina
Columbus, Ohio
Denver
Des Moines
Eugene
Flint
Gainesville
Iowa City
Las Vegas
Lexington, Kentucky
Little Rock
Los Angeles
Louisville
Madison
Memphis
Nashville
New Orleans
Pensacola
Philadelphia
Phoenix
Pittsburgh
Portland, Maine
Providence
Reno
Rochester, New York
Santa Cruz
Seattle
Tacoma
Tampa
Tucson
Washington, DC

They're gonna need supplies. And next Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, the Rude Pundit wants a whole lot of people to show up with the cold-weather gear that the people camped out are going to need to make it through the winter. If the NYC occupiers are not back in camp by then, the Rude Pundit will come out to Philadelphia. Who is organizing there?

Blanket the occupiers. Blanket the Earth.

But let's not get too "We Are the World" here. The siege is ongoing:

San Francisco has been raided and is being dismantled. San Diego is under attack. Dallas could be gone as early as today. Albany has been under constant threat by the police. Minnesota has been threatened by city officials in Minneapolis. Houston is in a battle over what is or is not a tent. Tulsa keeps getting fucked with. Occupy Missoula has been fucked with, too. Detroit is moving indoors rather than face the brutal Michigan winter. Charlottesville isn't sure if it'll be there past the 26th. Riverside, California, has been raided and still stands. And cops keep hassling the good people of Honolulu.

Yet Chicago keeps going without a camp. They are gonna need gear, too.

Let's show the nation that this movement can't be squashed by billionaire mayors or colluding authorities. They may have the cash, but we have the numbers.

2011-11-15T15:42:00.003-05:00

Observations on the Post-Raid Occupation in New York (Updated):
The creepiest thing that the Rude Pundit saw today over at Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan was a pair of large, short-haired white men in suits and black trenchcoats. G-Tweedledee was video recording the scene while G-Tweedledum was watching the recording on one of those extra strong ToughBook laptops. The Rude Pundit turned his camera on them, as they were standing right next to him near the edge of 1 Liberty Plaza. When they noticed, they moved further up the plaza. When security cleared the area, they were allowed to stay. And when the Rude Pundit filmed them again, they looked directly at and filmed him.

Secret Service? FBI? CIA? Who knows? But those fuckers were intimidating and frightening, which was, of course, part of the idea.

The Rude Pundit marched with the OWS remnants from their recon position at Duarte Park, about 10 blocks uptown. Up at Duarte, we were bordered by two lines of cops, not allowing us to walk off into the streets. The cops followed us along the march down to Zuccotti Park. We were joined by a wandering trumpeter across Varick Street. He played "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" and merged with the march. Finally, arriving at Zuccotti Park, we were blocked from entering the space by the NYPD, despite a judge's early morning order reversing the eviction that Mayor Michael Bloomberg had ordered.

It is not overstating the matter to say that Bloomberg and the NYPD were willfully in contempt of court. A judge said they were supposed to act one way. They acted in the opposite way. That's pretty clearly a violation of a court order. So instead the protesters surrounded the park in a barricaded path while others were arrested at Duarte.

Arrests happened at Zuccotti, mostly people trying to jump the barricades to get into the center of the park. The Rude Pundit saw (and recorded) a couple of them, including a man who tried to plant a large American flag in the park. He was slammed to the ground by the cops, who took his flag and rolled it up. They put the Stars and Stripes into a paddy wagon, while they put the man in the back. They locked the doors. They drove them both away.

The Rude Pundit heard some near him jeering the arrested, laughing about them being raped at Riker's Island. He turned on one older fuck, a douchebag past his prime. He asked the douchebag what he'd do. "Arrest 'em all. They're a bunch of criminal scum," he sneered. As the Rude Pundit asked the cock-faced bastard another question, the dude said, "That's all. I'm done. Move along now."

"Move along now?" The Rude Pundit said. "How about 'Okay, thanks'?" He said to move along again, and the Rude Pundit laughed in his corrupt fucking face.

Right now, we await a decision no whether or not the original order stands. But even if it does, will Bloomberg call the police off? And if he won't, who will enforce the will of the courts?

Remember: they were going to shut this down. They were always going to toss the tents and toss people into jail. They had to. That's who they are. They were always going to follow the same script they always do. They, the big “They,” the “They” that has the police in their pockets, the “They” that is always opposed to the “we,” as in “We, the People."

It had to end, the occupation, in order for it to flourish. Except it will not have ended in failure, no matter what the judge or the mayor say or do.

Update: The occupation is dead. Long live the occupation.

2011-11-15T12:36:00.001-05:00

Late post today: At OWS, waiting to see what happens.

2011-11-14T14:28:00.003-05:00

Now Newt?:
Really, GOP? Newt Gingrich now? Really? Deciding to move on to Newt Gingrich because Herman Cain was too tainted by a sex scandal is like moving on to crack once meth has lost its allure. Just shut the fuck up and nominate Mitt Romney as your mad godhead already.

Newt Gingrich is as appalling a globule of corrupt phlegm that the rheumatic lungs of the body politic has ever hacked up. Forget for a moment his government shutdown, his push for investigating every fake scandal of the Bill Clinton administration, his being driven out of DC like a rabid raccoon because of ethics violations, his hypocritical flogging of family values while he was ending every marriage by fucking another woman (and that's leaving out the hospital visit to his cancer-ridden first wife to discuss the terms of a break-up, not to mention his line of credit at Tiffany's). Forget all that. If you want to know what a vindictive, awful, petty motherfucker this motherfucker is, check this out:

When things were gearing up for the release of the Starr Report on Clinton, Gingrich wanted to impeach Al Gore, too. Not for anything the then-Vice President did, but for what he might do if he were president: "Gingrich believes that the report will be so tough that Clinton will be impeached. The thinking then goes that Gore, as his successor, will pardon Clinton. This, of course, leaves Gore in place as the incumbent president, which is not something the Republicans wish to have happen. So once Gore has pardoned Clinton, Gingrich's thinking goes, the Congress will impeach Gore for having pardoned Clinton. As one of these close associates of Gingrich said to me, 'You can't have a Clinton strategy without a Gore strategy.'"

You understand? He doesn't care. He doesn't fucking care. Drag the country through the upheaval of impeachment once? Fuck, why not do it again. And again. He only seeks to service a disgraced ideology, and he is part of the reason it's disgraced. Gingrich is just giddy, bloated rich windbag whose academic credentials give him the imprimatur of expertise where none exists. He is 100 pounds of shit in a 50 pound bag.

His idiotic Contract with America, which heaved itself out the same post-Reagan cesspool as Grover Norquist's destructive pledge, leads directly to the current partisan madness that has wreaked havoc on the nation. He nearly ripped the nation apart. Nominating Newt Gingrich for president is like giving a drunk the keys to a new car right after he wrapped the last one around a telephone pole.

And, as ever, “Fuck you, Newt Gingrich.”

2011-11-14T09:17:00.004-05:00

Organizing Blanket the Earth:
As more of you volunteer to organize for Blanket the Earth on November 25, let's make sure people know who you are. The Rude Pundit's not gonna post the info here because, well, it's cold out here in the real world.

Instead, post your info on the Blanket the Earth Facebook page. Atlanta, you're taken care of. You can also email the Rude Pundit to tell him it's cool for him to post it there.

He'll be talking about it this morning on The Stephanie Miller Show at 9:30 a.m. ET.

And let's hope that all the OWS encampments aren't wrecked by police before Black Friday.

(Genuine catching-up-with-the-news rudeness in a bit.)

2011-11-11T15:09:00.002-05:00

Keeping the Momentum Going:
Lots of people have gotten involved so far in Blanket the Earth. So instead of posting today, let's just link to yesterday's video and plan.

(And the Rude Pundit is in New Orleans, probably drunk right now, getting ready to be the guest writer at a lunch with Roy Blount, Jr. tomorrow.)

2011-11-10T14:55:00.002-05:00

Blanket the Earth: The Plan:
Ever since I first mentioned the idea of getting cold weather gear to Occupy Wall Street campers around the nation, I've heard from dozens of people about what exactly they could do. Could they donate money? Where could they send gear? What is the plan?

Here goes:
1. The idea: on November 25, the day after Thanksgiving, people will gather in designated spots in cities around the country where there are encampments of OWS protesters.

2. They will have warm weather gear to donate to the protesters. This can be blankets, socks, sleeping bags, hand and foot warmers, sweaters, or anything you think can be used to keep the camping protesters warm throughout the winter. The items can be secondhand (and clean, you know). New items can be purchased whenever, preferably not on the exploitative day coined by marketers as "Black Friday."

3. People will gather in designated places in each city near the OWS encampments in order to donate the items. I will post a list of organizers next week. The organizers will say where the Blanket the Earth group should meet. For example, in Atlanta, they have decided to gather at 60 Walton St. NW.

4. Yes, donations at any time are great. But Blanket the Earth is not organizing as a group to accept donations of any kind. If you want to participate in the day, give someone who is going the items you'd like to donate. Also, I'm not accepting any monetary donations for this. If you want to donate money, that's generous of you, and you should give to things like Occupy Supply.

5. The goal here is to show our support not just through the kindness of monetary donations, but by being physically present to demonstrate that we're here for the protesters.

6. Yes, there is a chance that you may end up being the only person in your town to show up.

7. Organizers should send me a message on how people can contact them in their cities. Write, as ever, to rudepundit_at_yahoo.com (and you can send me questions there). You can also post info on the Blanket the Earth Facebook page or you can follow and respond on Twitter to @blankettheearth.

8. Spread the word. Use your own social networks to get out the information. Let's make sure the people who are the foot soldiers in this movement know that they are appreciated and that we have their backs.

More info to come, including where to meet in NYC. And you can check out this video that says some of the same info, except with OWS in the background:

Thanks to all who have said they would participate so far.

And don't worry - more regular rudeness coming.

2011-11-10T13:27:00.003-05:00

Late Post Today (Obviously):
Because fog shut down LaGuardia Airport like the town in that John Carpenter movie (if only there had been ghost pirates).

Back in a bit with a Blanket the Earth video and post.

2011-11-09T17:08:00.002-05:00

The Rude Pundit Among Respectable Author-Type Folks:
This weekend, the Rude Pundit will be taking part in the Words and Music 2011 festival in New Orleans, put on by the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society. He and Roy Blount, Jr. will be your lunchtime entertainment on Friday. And on Saturday morning, he'll be on a panel on the Internet and artists with Andrei Codrescu and others. (That one is actually a change in the published schedule.)

Chances are that he'll be drunk a great deal of the time at the Napoleon House.

If you're at the festival, come on over and give a "Hey." Hopefully, he'll be sober enough to respond.

2011-11-09T10:09:00.002-05:00

Election Lesson: Republicans Learn That Americans Aren't Quite as Crazy as They Are:
Let's put this in perspective. For the last year, Republicans have been walking around with big hard-ons, sticking them in everyone's face, saying, "Yeah, aren't you so impressed with how big my cock is?" For a good chunk of the year, the media and the public and, indeed, many Democrats have been responding, "Yes, yes, that's a really huge erection you've got there, Cantor." And some of them have added, "Can we get some work done now?" To which the tumescent Republicans have said, "No. We can't get any work done at all until you talk more about how big my cock is with this raging boner." Which would lead to more talk about, oh, gee, just how enormous a hard-on it is. So instead of actually accomplishing anything. all everyone does is sit around and talk about Republican dicks.

Yesterday, voters across the country smacked those erections and said, "Get those fucking things out of our faces."

In Ohio, Republican Governor John "Bill O'Reilly's Ball Washer" Kasich got cock-punched by over 60% of voters, who didn't just overturn the Senate's anti-collective bargaining bill that "sought to end binding arbitration to settle contracts with safety forces [and] ban strikes for other public workers." No, instead Kasich got his ass handed to him on a platter because he went right for the wallets of the middle and working classes. And they stopped the mugging.

In Mississippi (no, really, fuckin' Mississippi), nearly 60% of voters said, "You know, we like birth control and IVF and, shhh, abortion" by rejecting zygote rights, or the "Personhood Amendment," which would have meant that every miscarriage was unintentional manslaughter (actually, that's not an absurd interpretation of this idiotic, woman-hating proposal). Lieutenant Gov. Phil Bryant had said that if the amendment failed, "Satan wins," so it looks like a large chunk of the state went down to the crossroads.

In Maine, over 60% of voters overturned a Republican law that ended same-day voter registration. Why? Because it was just an obvious, bullshit way to disenfranchise Democrats, even more so than voter i.d. bills.

In Arizona, the Republican Senate president, Russell Pearce, who is not the unholy Aussie spawn of Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, has lost a recall election to a less nutzoid Republican (who is even more humorously named "Jerry Lewis"). Pearce is the dude who made Arizona into the laughingstock of the world by authoring vicious anti-immigrant legislation (although Alabama didn't exactly get the joke). How significant is this? "Pearce becomes the first sitting Senate president in the nation and the first Arizona legislator ever to lose a recall election. He would be required to step down immediately."

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though. Let's not cheer jubilantly that the year of Republican overreach has completely been turned on its head. Ohio also approved a non-binding amendment opting out of President Obama's health care reform law. And in Mississippi, that guy who said that shit about Satan winning? Yeah, he's governor now. And Mississippians approved a voter i.d. law.

The lesson here is not that the nation is turning against Republicans, per se, but it is saying, "Whoa, we're not that crazy and cruel." The real lesson is that the Tea Party is dead. The only hard-on it's got left is the one that rigor mortis causes. It's sinking into the ocean like so many boxes of fine Earl Grey. The only thing Republicans need to figure out is if they are tied so tightly to the corpse that it drags them down into the drink, too.

2011-11-08T10:21:00.002-05:00

Republicans Believe Something Except When They Don't (or Why Mitt Romney Is Their Perfect Candidate):
So, let's just get this right, dear, sweet GOP:

Here's Republican Senator Jon Kyl of the awful state of Arizona on September 8, 2011, talking about President Obama's jobs bill: "Faced with the reality of historic unemployment rates and record federal debt, I had hoped that President Obama, by now, would understand that even more government spending doesn't create jobs."

And here's Republican Senator Jon Kyl of the idiotic state of Arizona on September 13, 2011, at a hearing about potential cuts in the defense budget if the Superduper Committee of Congressional Superfriends fails (as it will): "[W]ith defense, for example, you’ve got high unemployment of returning veterans to begin with. You have reduction in end strength. You’ve got more people potentially unemployed. You got people making radios and building ships and so on. And if those cuts, therefore, end up reducing the employment in those industries and the amount of money spent in those areas, obviously it could delay economic recovery."

You see what happened there? In case you've got brain damage or are from Arizona, let's make it perfectly clear: Republican Senator Jon Kyl of the fucktarded state of Arizona said that government spending doesn't create jobs but that if you cut government spending, you'll lose jobs. Or, in other words, government spending creates jobs.

How fucked up does a group of people have to be to think that they have anything like an "ideology"? How fucked up do voters have to be to keep putting these grifters and grafters into office? So infrastructure spending doesn't create jobs but bomber manufacturing does. How is one different than the other? Oh, right. One creates things that give Republicans raging erections. The other spending just makes things that are fucking useful and necessary.

Of course, this kind of rank hypocrisy ain't surprising in any way, shape, or form. How many examples can you come up with off the top of your head? Family values Republicans who fuck male prostitutes? Bill Clinton and Anthony Weiner need to be condemned, but Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain are cool? Howzabout another one that doesn't directly involve sex:

Another worthless thing that makes the yahoo voters slaver is when Republicans assert that "government regulations" are killing jobs, so we need to gut EPA rules and anything else that might be, you know, for the safety and health of the workers. It's a lie, a lie that anyone honest will actually tell you is a lie. (No, really: the Rude Pundit asks friends of his that are small business owners this all the time. Just last week, when he put the question of the burden of regulations to an entrepreneur pal, she just stared at him and said, "No, what's hurting my business is that people need jobs to pay for things." This shit is really that cut and dried.)

However, when it comes to something the GOP hates, workplace safety regulations are the tits, man. For what are Republican legislatures in Kansas, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere attempting to do? Shut down family planning clinics where abortions are performed. Their tool? Motherfuckin' government regulations.

Yep, by holding them to a whole new batch of new regulations, the clinics in these states will either close or give up performing abortions. And many jobs will be lost, specifically and by design. And women in those states will have unwanted children, many of which will end up being supported by government spending. And some women will have illegal abortions, which will end up in them needing further medical care, much of it paid for by the state.

Oh, wait. Actually, it's very clever. Republicans are demonstrating just how burdensome regulations by making them as onerous as possible and creating havoc just to prove a point. Or they're just dicks angling for votes in the piranha pool of the extreme right wing.

Today, Erick "Erick" Erickson writes, in the blog RedState (motto: "The reason why that blobby fuck appears on your CNN") that the inevitable nomination of serial flip-flopper Mitt Romney will destroy everything sacred about conservatism. Two things: Romney actually represents the craven, amoral, opportunistic GOP better than just about anyone else, so, of course, he should be the nominee. And there is nothing left to destroy in conservatism. It's been hollowed out from the inside by parasites like Romney and Erickson.

2011-11-07T16:20:00.003-05:00

Karl Rove's Ex-Leather Slave Watches the Herman Cain Scandal Unfold:
He stares at his cell phone, wondering if he should call Anderson Cooper. He had just watched the press conference featuring Sharon Bialek, the fourth woman now to say that Herman Cain sexually harassed her. He had read and seen Cain's vociferous denials. They don't matter, he thinks, goddamn, they don't matter. This stinks of him, he thinks. And if anyone knows the smell of Karl Rove, it's the Republican operative's ex-leather slave.

Karl Rove kept his leather slave in the basement of the White House when Rove worked for then-President George W. Bush. The leather slave was chained there, between Teddy Roosevelt's rhino horn dildo collection and William Henry Harrison's sputum trough. Rove would use and abuse the leather slave, having rough - no, violent - sex with him whenever the mood struck, sex that often involved various implements and tools and, well, rhino horns being shoved into the leather slave's ass, that involved razors and blood-lapping, that involved shit and piss and vomit, whatever nightmare scenario Rove wanted to enact. The leather slave escaped in 2006, and he has lived a quiet, nearly invisible life ever since, trying to keep Rove from finding him and imprisoning him again.

Many things have happened that have tempted the ex-leather slave to urge action against Rove by the media, things that have had the stench of Rove on them, like his attempt to fan racial fires back in 2008 by trying to make it seem as if he backed Obama over Clinton. The birth certificate thing was too obvious, too broad a joke to come from Rove, the ex-leather slave knows. But this Herman Cain thing. That's got Rove written all over it. The bonus is that it's true. Not that it would matter at this point.

Look at how masterful it is: Cain was emerging as the spoiler to Rove's chosen candidate, Mitt Romney. Rove knew Rick Perry would implode. But Cain was a surprise. And so he leaked the info on the sexual harassment case settlements to his people at Politico. Of course, they bit. Of course, Cain would fuck up the entire defense because, shit, he was guilty. What's there to defend? Of course, of course, of course. That's why Rove is the gallbladder of the American body politic, the flesh sac where the bile of our national discourse is concentrated into a poison that can dissolve other cells.

The ex-leather slave rents a small apartment in Williamsburg, Virginia, and he makes his living now as a colonial reenactor, telling people all about the joys of being a blacksmith. Leather tanner was too obvious. He loves being in disguise. He loves being part of the way in which people perceive the history of the nation. He loves always having a weapon in his hands in case Rove shows up to claim him.

He pulls his hand away from the phone. The verdict in the Michael Jackson doctor case has come in. There will be nothing else to talk about. He cannot chase the real Rove out of the shadows. The thought of his ex-master makes the ex-leather slave feel the thrusts and hear the grunts. He wants to scream out to Cooper, to anyone, "He has never gone away. He has just slunk into the dark depths of SuperPACs and money-laundering campaign operations. You can't escape him. You may hate Cain, but it's just the start. It's just the start."

He starts to sweat. Maybe, if he calls, Rove will find him. He can't risk it. He turns back to the TV. Ahh, the sweet bliss of the media engorging on the buffet of a celebrity death trial.

2011-11-07T10:33:00.002-05:00

Late Post Today:
Meetings about Blanket the Earth and working on a video for this week all about it (because moving pictures is much more betterer than tired ol' words).

So far, we have people organizing in Atlanta, Austin, Trenton, Nashville, Chicago, and more. The Rude Pundit's got NYC. Even if you're in those cities and want to get involved, contact the Rude Pundit and he'll hook you up with others.

Back later with more luminous rudeness.

2011-11-04T11:33:00.002-04:00

A 12 Year-Old Talks to Occupy Wall Street Protesters (A Blanket the Earth Post):
Here's your heartwarming and politically relevant video for the weekend. A 12 year-old associate of the Rude Pundit - think of her as his James O'Keefe except with journalistic ethics. She was down at Occupy Wall Street in Lower Manhattan last week, and she interviewed some of the people there, including a professor, someone who was fired for organizing a union at Walmart, a homeless woman, and a former soldier whose nurse mother lost her retirement funds.

The Rude Pundit is going full steam ahead with his idea to give blankets and coats and hand warmers and more to the OWSers on Friday, November 25. He'll be coordinating things in general and organizing whatever donors can be there in New York City. He's had volunteers offer to coordinate in Austin and Atlanta.

Howzabout some people for some really cold cities, like Chicago or Boston? Head over to the Facebook page or Twitter feed to learn more.

2011-11-03T11:30:00.002-04:00

Poverty Isn't Just for Poor People Anymore:
The Brookings Institute released a new study on the concentration of extreme poverty neighborhoods around the nation. Such neighborhoods have poverty rates of more than 40% of the people "living" there. Existing in extreme poverty" is analogous to getting locked in a cage with horny hippos who batter you around for a while, drag you down under the shit-filled water until you nearly drown, and then rape your ass while you catch your breath, before doing it again. And again.

Surprise, surprise: Brookings found that, after a steep decline in rates of people living in extreme poverty areas in the 1990s, it rose starkly from 2000-2009. How much? After a 27.8% decline in the 90s, the number in the USA rose by 32.9% in the 00s. Huh. Wonder what was so different about those decades? Had to be something drastically different, but the Rude Pundit can't imagine. It must all be illegal Mexicans.

The number of extreme poverty neighborhoods (or "tracts," as the study says) rose by 36%. Most starkly, this affected "small-metro" areas, where the number of tracts rose by 75%, with an 81% rise in the number of people living in extreme poverty areas. The Midwest was the worst off, with the numbers doubling. And where are you fucked beyond fucked if you're dirt poor in America? Ohio, man. (By the way, don't look so smug, California. You're pretty damn fucked, too.)

Yeah, Ohio pretty much sucks hobo balls right now. Youngstown, Dayton, Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, Akron, all have had a growth spurt in sections of towns or suburbs where people live in a blighted hellscape with shitty schools, shitty services, shitty homes, shitty crime rates, and, more than likely, tons of actual shit.

Ohio needs massive spending in order to bring its citizens back from the pit of despair. Of course, Ohio's got a Republican governor, John Kasich, who instead has advocated budget cuts and gutting collective bargaining (which will probably be overturned by ballot initiative by people in Ohio who are smarter than their former Fox "news" host governor). Read Mac McClelland's essential Mother Jones article on Ohio if you want a wrist-cuttingly stark picture of the degradation of the American dream.

Truly, truly, truly, the question everyone in this country should be asking is not why things happen like last night's port blockade and subsequent riot in Oakland. What they should be asking is why aren't riots occurring nonstop.

2011-11-02T15:34:00.002-04:00

Photos That Are a Nice Start:

Look, the general strike called by Occupy Oakland could have been bigger. It could have involved more union members. It could have shut shit down. Instead, a few thousand people marched, supported by sympathy marches around the country.

Some banks closed and bus lines were disrupted. 13% of the area's teachers joined in. But the port did not close, as was rumored early on. And not many of the longshoremen joined in. It was a solid protest, not a true general strike.

What the Oakland action does is provide a template for future actions. We live in a nation that hasn't seen a true general strike since 1946 in, well, Oakland, and a nation that hasn't seen a massively disruptive strike since, perhaps the UPS strike in 1997. Workers need to understand once again that the strike is a legitimate tool of dissent. And as the rank and file of the Occupy movement grows, so will the sympathy for a larger action.

That march up there is fine. It is the advance team of the people really taking back the nation.

2011-11-02T11:31:00.002-04:00

Late Post Today, But Jump on the Blanket the Earth Train:
Let's keep the momentum going here for the Rude Pundit's idea for bringing warmth to the Occupy Wall Streeters all over the U.S., if not the world.

The deal again: On Friday, November 25, a group meets at a designated location in each city where there's an OWS encampment. We bring blankets, socks, hand warmers, and more. They can be bought or secondhand. The donation will then become a show of support from those of us not camped out, a way of saying, "You keep going. We need you."

Let's organize more on the Twitter and Facebook machines.

More info soon. And feel free to make suggestions about this effort.

Back later with more ignoble rudeness.

2011-11-01T10:56:00.003-04:00

Yes, Liberals Are Totally Responsible for the Herman Cain Sexual Harassment Story:
You know on thing that's really hilarious about conservatives? How they preach the "personal responsibility" dogma and then, when they're caught doing something wrong or fucking up, it's always someone else's fault. Asked something in a debate that makes 'em give an answer that reveals how batshit or stupid they are? It's a "gotcha" question. It's discovered that a leading presidential candidate settled a pair of sexual harassment claims against him? He's now "a prominent Conservative targeted by liberals simply because they disagree with his politics."

Sean Hannity went full conspiracy theory on the Cain harassment story on his Fox "news" show, comparing Cain to Clarence Thomas and his whiny "high-tech lynching" remarks. Ann Coulter and Dick Morris joined in for a hideous three-way that involved mouth-to-ass action followed by a comparison of their shit-eating grins, which looked that way because they had actually eaten shit. The right-wing practitioners of bloggery also tried to get in on the action.

Now, a liberal could get pretty goddamn upset and sputter, "No..fuck you...After what you did to Bill Clinton? And you're gonna accuse us of anything? Blow a rhino dick, you fuckers."

But screw it. The jig is up. They caught us. Again. You're right, you smart smarty conservatives. This is totally the work of the same liberal cabal that faked Obama's birth certificate and made Larry Craig like to get his cock sucked in men's rooms.

Here's how we did it:
See, back in the late 1990s, while Clinton was still in office, we knew that America was going to be begging to elect an executive from junk food restaurants to be president, probably once we triggered the Obama option that we'd been working on since 1961. Knowing that the most likely candidate would be Herman Cain, when he became the head of the National Restaurant Association, we went into action. We had oppo research that Cain liked to tell dirty jokes and talk and ask questions about the sexuality of the people around him. We got two of our female operatives to get into a position to be close to him at the workplace, and when he acted as expected, they brought accusations of inappropriate behavior against Cain.

The most insidious part of our liberal plot was that we couldn't have it come out then or it would have ruined our chance to disgrace Cain over a decade later. So our operatives took the settlements they coerced Cain into offering in order to bury the story, only to create an online news journal named "Politico," filling it with reporters who criticize Obama for cover, and then using it for the specific purpose of revealing the Cain story.

Our timing was impeccable: Wait until one of the most unelectable, insane figures to ever be in contention for a party nomination to be riding a crest of public interest even though there is not a chance in hell that he'd ever win in a general election and then hit him with allegations that don't even involve actual sex. Yes, we were sure that the same people who believe in his idiotic economic plan, who think that killing people trying to cross the border is a good idea, who want a president who thinks that his ignorance of world leaders is an asset, who has shifted his opinion on abortion, who blames people who were fired from their jobs for being poor during the worst economy since the Great Depression, yes, yes, we were sure that what would turn people against Herman Cain is the idea that he flirted with a couple of anonymous women who worked for him. We really thought that his followers would say, "You know, I agree with Cain that Planned Parenthood exists in order to kill black babies, but his asking 'personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature' to his employees is just too crazy for me."

Oh, how we thought we had enough layers for plausible deniability, not to mention the obvious alibi that it was either the Romney or Perry campaigns, but Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh were just too damn smart for us.

2011-10-31T11:48:00.003-04:00

Let's Actually Do Something: Blanket the Occupiers:
So out here in Left Blogsylvania, we have offered as much moral and rhetorical support as we perhaps can to the Occupy Wall Street movement, with a good many of us actually going down to the various occupations and reporting and/or taking part (not being NPR-labeled "journalists" allows us to do so). But winter's coming, fast up here in the Northeast. And while the Rude Pundit is convinced that the true flourishing of the Occupy movement will occur next spring (and into the awful summer and awfuller fall of an election year), there's a core of the protesters who are gonna stay, no matter what.

Here's what the Rude Pundit proposes, an action in the spirit of OWS:

On Friday, November 25, the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, as marketers force us to know, let's give to our local Occupy encampments what they need to stay warm for the winter.

The deal: check out your local Occupy website. There's a list of all the things they need in order to flat out survive into the spring.

Bring stuff to keep 'em all warm through the cold nights since they are doing the hard, hard work of creating the foundation for genuinely forcing change in the political dialogue and the economic stratification of the United States (and around the world).

On November 25th, as a show of general support, we'll meet to give as large a donation as possible in person at the occupation areas (or where the supplies are kept). Each city could have a meeting place and time for the donors.

Speaking of marketing, we could call this "Blanket the Earth." We could organize this on, say, a Facebook page or perhaps a Twitter feed or a hastag.

The Rude Pundit's gonna see if he can get some of his blogging friends and others involved. And you should do the same. It's a simple gesture, an inexpensive one (a pair of socks would be awesome or even the donation of secondhand stuff), and one that opposes the hyper-materialism of the date.

There was an old saying from back in the days of when labor union members would be jailed for striking. It was a chant from the rank and file of unions and their families, in response to the chants of the jailed: "Remember you're inside for us while we're out here for you." The idea was to keep the work of protest and activism going.

Let's keep that spirit alive. So, yes, do donate throughout the next month (and if you can't be there on that Friday).

But a large show of support on a single day would be a powerful message that we're here for the occupiers.

2011-10-28T11:59:00.002-04:00

Taking Some Comp Time, Boss:
Hey, wow, aren't those Republicans assholes? (See? That's Quality Bloggery right there.)

The Rude Pundit's taking a long-ass drive today because sometimes a man's just gotta burn some fossil fuels to teach that atmosphere a lesson. (And he's gotta get to a thing.)

So he's taking a day here. He'll post some audio treats later.

Choose your final line:

Oh, and suck bird balls, Rangers.

Oh, and fuck you, Cards.

2011-10-27T10:39:00.000-04:00

The Occupy Movement and the Unruly Reclamation of Public Spaces:
Let's get pseudo-intellectual here for a moment:

Back in the old days that conservatives like to get all nostalgic about, people slept in the parks. In the days before air conditioning, when it got too hot for fans and windows to do the trick, people just brought their families to the parks and camped out. Here's how the New York Times wrote about it during a July 1904 heat wave: "On the east side last night the heat in the big tenements was unbearable, and the residents there vacated their homes early in the evening. The small parks were overrun, and many of the people went to the recreation piers. In the parks the people disregarded the 'Keep off the grass' signs, and many stretched out on the green lawns to spend the night there." Poor people violating the law in order to survive. That's not an overstatement. People were dying or going to the hospital because of the 95 degree weather.

Imagine that: as an ordinary event, thousands of impoverished people, many of them immigrants, the polyglot of languages, the smell of sweat and food, all gathering in public spaces. Yes, there were ordinances that were violated, but the times called for the restrictions to be eased. During the heat wave of August 1938, hundreds of thousands of people slept on beaches and in parks in New York City. When police arrested 60 men for sleeping in parks, the magistrate they were brought before released them and said, "I think we can all show a little leniency in these days of record-breaking heat." The city said that people could sleep outside until the heat broke.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of capitalist materialism in the United States has been to isolate us and keep us out of the public spaces for any purpose but those that are sanctioned by the Law and that have consumption as a purpose. In other words, recreation and leisure is fine - go to the park with your kids, go to a football game - but anything that is remotely challenging to the approbation of those with power (not just the 1%, but those who defend their interests all around us) must be condemned and confronted.

(An aside: This actually points up the major difference between the Tea Party and OWS: the Tea Party exists to give aid and comfort to the powerful, so, of course, it is met with mostly head-patting approval by officials and businesses.)

Public spaces, and parks especially, have meaning beyond just being play areas and homeless zoos. When all those poor people gathered in the heat in the early 20th century, they were merely doing what they knew. See, when conservatives talk about the way "neighbors" relied on each other, they forget that, minus TV, minus smart phones, minus the myriad alienating distractions that have been foisted upon us, and that we embrace, those same people would also talk politics, face to face, a great deal more than we do now. That's how movements started.

The genius (yes, genius) of OWS is that it's not being done online. Honestly, who gives a damn how many people sign an internet petition? Or how many people have signed up for MoveOn.org's stream of email? The Rude Pundit has done both, but he felt as if he had done almost nothing for a cause because he had. Down at Liberty Plaza, despite the wifi connectivity, everything is done in an affirming, low-tech way, and not just the human microphone. The schedule for the day is written up on a marker board. There's a library with actual books. People handout flyers. Artists work on signs. Others use stencils and spray paint to create t-shirt designs. And everyone talks. Any time the Rude Pundit has been there, either to interview people or just to take part, he has been able to simply enter into conversation, about the occupation, about the economic disparity in America, about what can be done.

What's frustrating for a media (and a citizenry) so used to talking points and soundbites is that consensus goals are not the point of OWS. Instead, it is to demonstrate how power can be wielded without money substituting for speech; it is the reclamation of a face-to-face dialogue that has been moderated and regulated and filtered through so many talk shows and Facebook pages and Twitter accounts and, yes, blogs. Those things are necessary, but what's essential, and what OWS has reasserted in a way that hasn't been seen since the early 1970s, is that it occur, in large numbers, in the public space, in an unruly and confrontational way.

Of course the unruly must themselves be confronted violently by those who fear losing their control, who fear the collapse of a system they have fostered for decades. Because the Occupy Movement is engaging in a threatening activity. If they are communing, they are not consuming. If they are not consuming (in a really Marxist sense), they can lose their alienation and isolation.

Here's the kicker, though: The usual methods for regulating and controlling the public spaces aren't working this time. In fact, as it should, the more the powerful attempt to control the unruly in this case, the more the unruly attempt to take over the public space and enforce the "public" part.

2011-10-26T11:20:00.002-04:00

Note to the Oakland Police Union: You Could Probably Use the Protesters' Help:
You know, the Oakland cops could probably use the support of large numbers of protesters. At the end of 2010, Police Chief Anthony Batts said that "Oakland needs a minimum of 925 police officers. Starting next month, however, Oakland city officials say there is only enough money to pay for 637 positions, the lowest rank-and-file number since 1987, and the department is quickly reaching that level." This is not to mention "the department should have a minimum of 420 officers assigned to the patrol division," and it has only 350.

"I’ll be clear to you. I do not have enough police officers," Batts, who stepped down this year, said in December 2010. July 2010 had seen the layoff of 80 cops for budget reasons. The final budget numbers in 2011: "The police department will be budgeted for 636 officers this year and 588 next year." This July, in contract negotiations, the police union agreed that its members would pay 9% of their pensions in exchange for a promise for no more layoffs until 2015.

The cops went all apeshit on the Occupy Oakland protesters, who were not nearly as organized as Occupy Wall Street. Still, even if there were rats and sanitation problems, it sure seems like the cops went in with the intent to kick some ass and were baiting the exhausted and "paranoid" occupiers with an absurdly massive show of force in the middle of the night. You watch the videos of the raid on Ogawa Plaza, and you want to say, "Umm, you realize that these are unarmed civilians most of whom committed the crime of trespassing, right? No? You're just gonna go all stormtrooper on their hippie asses?" The action passed "overkill" at the point that the first tear gas canister hit the air.

In other words, working with cops from other areas, the Oakland PD committed a large amount of its minimal force to execute an eviction notice. It must have been a good night to be a drug dealer or thief or murderer in Oakland.

Quick note to a scattered few protesters: Don't throw shit at the cops. Don't give 'em an excuse to gas you. Non-violence works only if you actually don't get violent. You wanna win the revolution? Get the police on your side. The rank and file actually want a reason to support you.

2011-10-25T10:31:00.002-04:00

A Brief Exegesis of a Herman Cain Campaign Video:
At the opening of "Now is the time," an unlisted video on presidential candidate Herman Cain's YouTube channel, we see the face of a man, a middle-aged white man with glasses and a mustache and silvering hair, and he's speaking very sincerely to us. What does he want? On first blush, we might assume he is about to confess something to us, perhaps an unspeakable lust for young boys for, indeed, he looks as if he knows his way around an illegal chat room or two. But, no. He is the chief of staff for Cain's campaign, and he is imploring us to rally to his man's side. When he is finished speaking, music surges. "I am America," a female voice sings, and we see a close-up of the man as he sucks on a cigarette and then blows smoke out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes staring at us as if we are strippers on a stage, spreading our legs for his inspection. The video ends with Herman Cain looking serious and then slowly, slyly smiling. It is the look of a father about to get pleasure from spanking his own child's bare bottom. In fact, the whole of the ad seems to say: "These men are stalking you, and you will probably need a restraining order in order to survive the weekend."

To be fair-ish, that final creepy smile is featured in several of the videos on Cain's channel and website. If you want three minutes of unadulterated bugfuck insanity, check out "He Carried Yellow Flowers," which takes place on the set of an Old West movie and during which a buck-toothed black cowboy is beaten by a white cowboy in the background as an actor in costume tells us how much we need Herman Cain. This is not to mention the sexy, silent woman holding a chicken, which prompts two "nice chicken" comments (one imagines Cain wanted them to say, "Nice cock," but, you know, he's running for office, for Pete's sake). Then it ends with the Cain slow smirk, except this time it seems to be saying, "The joke's on you."

At least one ad contains a piece of information that probably ought to be included whenever anybody takes seriously his 9-9-9 economic "plan." It is a quote from Cain: "If 10% is good enough for God, then 9% should be just fine for the federal government." It's not an insignificant, throwaway line because it's at the end of his video introducing the plan (the one where he compares a progressive tax code to slavery, which you can be sure that Harriet Tubman would totally agree with).

While everyone is amused at the idea that 9-9-9 may have come from Sim City, perhaps the more relevant questions are whether Cain actually believe that everyone should be giving 10% of their income to churches and if his economic "plan" is actually based on the idea that the government should get less than religious groups.

(Note: None of this means that the Rude Pundit thinks Cain is anything less than a greedy exploiter of idiot Republicans who long for anyone who is not Romney.)

2011-10-24T11:05:00.002-04:00

Wal-Mart Decides That It's Cheaper to Hire New Employees Than Take Care of the Ones They Have:
So, ha-ha-ha, back in 2008, a moustachioed handicapper of stocks (also known as "Crazy-Ass Guessing") named Jim Jubak wrote a column for MSN Money titled "Let Wal-Mart Fix U.S. Health Care." Oh, how he mocked Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's plans for doing the deed. And his solution was to look to America's largest private employer and its low-priced drugs and new walk-in clinics for how to bend the market to the consumer's will: "Wal-Mart has done more to expand coverage and lower costs in the past year than any government program to come out of Washington in the past 10 years. And I'd bet the new programs that this company -- known for stiffing its own part-time workers on health care benefits -- has announced in the past year will do more to expand coverage and cut costs than anything likely to come out of a McCain, Clinton or Obama first term."

After criticizing the company for failing to insure its part-time workers, Jubak said, "The company has cut the waiting period on health insurance for part-time workers to 12 months. (For 2007, the company set a goal of having 50% of its employees covered by company health insurance. The national average at big companies in the United States is 63%.) Children of part-time workers will be eligible for company health benefits."

Let's see how that went. Probably a rousing success filled with rainbows and lollipops available at discount prices, right? Nope. Except for the cheap drugs, it's nothing but a failed clusterfuck of dashed hopes and dreams topped with uninsured employees still working for shit wages. In other words, just like America.

Yeah, the whole clinic thing ended up a flop of Pawlentian proportions. By mid-2009, with ambitions to have 400 open with 2000 possible, Wal-Mart had 31. Even today, there's less than 200. You're more likely to get health care from a free clinic being held in a Wal-Mart parking lot than in the store.

And the super-mega-retailer's part-time employees? They're fucked. If you work under 24 hours a week doing the soul-crushing labor of stocking the shelves at the Supercenter, watching the poverty-stricken, obese moving bodies we used to call "people" using their carts as walkers as they decide whether to get new stretch pants or that double-sized bag of nachos with their disability checks as your fellow employees cower in fear that the ghost of Sam Walton will enter their brains and eat them from the inside if they even dare think of unionizing, you can't get health insurance from Wal-Mart, for you or your kids. (If you work 25-33 hours, you can't get it for your spouse, although you're allowed to buy in for your kids - no change there.)

Plus, it gets worse for the full-timers. Now, they've gotta pay more for their insurance - for instance, 40% more if they smoke - with a much higher deductible: "Barbara Collins, a sales associate at the Wal-Mart in Placerville, Calif., said that the premiums for the H.M.O. plan for herself and her 5-year-old son would rise to $18 every two weeks from $10. Her big concern, she said, was that her deductible would jump to $5,000 a year, from $1,000 — a daunting amount considering she earns $19,000 a year."

Wal-Mart says the cost has gotten too high for it to continue to expand coverage and that it needs to contribute less to current policies. And that it needs to lower prices even more, even if that cheaper Sam's brand cola comes out of the blood and bone of its employees. Perhaps, at the end of the day, it's just more profitable to train new cashiers if the current ones die of illnesses they can't afford.

By the way, in August, Wal-Mart reported a 5.7% rise in 2nd quarter profits. It made $3.8 billion in profit in that 3 months.

Which, if you think about it, means Wal-Mart is acting just like the U.S. health care system.

2011-10-21T11:52:00.004-04:00

Why Wall Street and Everywhere Else Need to Be Occupied:

That family there is waiting in line at the Central Park United Methodist Church weekly food pantry two days ago, when Getty photographer Spencer Platt took a series of photos of the poorest city in America: Reading, Pennsylvania. By the way, in case that didn't hit you, it's a weekly food pantry. There's a whole tour of sites you can go to throughout the week in Berks County if you want to eat a couple of square meals a day.

Those people up there are part of the 5000 or so who started showing up yesterday for a four-day free health clinic in Los Angeles. They waited in enormous lines in order to get wristbands so they could see a doctor.

When snarky commentators want to know exactly what the protesters in Zuccotti Park and around the country are trying to achieve, how about this: a nation where those two photos can't be taken within 24 hours of each other, if ever.

2011-10-20T16:15:00.002-04:00

A Few Bits of Advice for National Public Radio:
Hey, there, NPR. Rude Pundit here. First-time caller. In the Big Apple, WNYC, one of your flagship stations, is having a fund drive. The Rude Pundit's been a continuous contributor for a few years now, mainly due to his unrequited crush on Terry Gross. But he feels invested enough to offer you a couple of pieces of advice as you go along.

First off, can you please tell your on-air fundraisers to stop comparing the cost of supporting a single public radio station to the cost of cable TV. You know what the difference is? If Garrison Keillor appears on one's TV, one can change the channel.

Okay, that's a minor annoyance. Let's move on to something bigger, like:

Could you stop being such acquiescent little bitches to the fucking assholes of right-wing blogging blabbery? (You might wanna put your finger on the bleep button.) Seriously, allowing your corporate agenda to be set by Andrew Breitbart is like allowing your balls to be waxed by chimpanzee.

Because between Ron Schiller bullshit and now this firing of Lisa Simeone, you've pretty much put your nuts in Bonzo's paw. Simeone is the host of one program, World of Opera, and she used to also host Soundprint before NPR forced the station that produced it to shitcan her once it came out that Simeone was doing some speaking about the October 11 movement in DC (which is associated with Occupy Wall Street). Breitbart and Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller (motto: "Well, what the fuck else is Tucker Carlson gonna do?") called her a "spokesperson" for the movement, which is true if you mean she's a person who sometimes spoke about it. But not on NPR.

Now, you can say, NPR, that you have an ethics policy that applies to everyone. It reads in one part, "NPR journalists may not participate in marches and rallies involving causes or issues that NPR covers." Except since when the fuck is the opera chick a journalist? And, you know, does that mean no NPR on-air personnel could attend, say, Jon Stewart's rally last October? And her other show, Soundprint? This week, it's about Edmund Hillary. Unless his skull is occupying DC, then who the fuck cares what Simeone's involved in in her free time?

And if the opera chick's a journalist, does that mean that NPR personnel cannot attend the opera because it's being covered by one of your journalists? Your code also says, "NPR journalists may sit on community advisory boards, educational institution trustee boards, boards of religious organizations or boards of nonprofit organizations so long as NPR does not normally cover them." So if Diane Rehm is on the board of an opera company, is she in violation? And let's not even get into the ethical dilemma of Mara Liasson appearing regularly on Fox "news." That's like a fucking in-kind donation to the Republican Party.

Mostly, though, what's it say about you, NPR, that the moment the slightest bit of controversy is voiced about anything, you immediately back down? From back during the Bush II administration, when you decided you needed more conservative commentary in order to appease those who said you were the liberalest of the liberal media (which led to some of the most embarrassing sputum ever aired on All Things Considered), to the Juan Williams nonsense to this, it just seems like the path of least resistance is also the path of least self-respect.

2011-10-20T12:45:00.003-04:00

Late Post Today:
Yeah, yeah, it's been a busy week at what we might properly refer to as the Rude Pundit's "job." For now, let us all pause in thanks that we never have to figure out the proper Western spelling of "G/Q/Kaddafi/y" again.

Back in a bit with more defiant rudeness.

2011-10-19T10:50:00.002-04:00

Random Observations on Last Night's GOP Debate Thing:
1. The Rude Pundit's second to none when it comes to his contempt for buffoonish grifter/pizza pusher Herman Cain, whose sole purpose in running for president is to be able to add a line to the marketing materials for his speeches and books. So it would have been fine if the other GOP candidates at last night's seven-way in Las Vegas had treated him like a clown whose presence mocks the political process, if they had viciously dissected him. Instead, they decided to respond to his surge in the polls, his 9-9-9 tax plan, the man himself like he was the house nigger who tried to tell his master a better way to stable the horses.

Here's Rick Santorum: "Herman’s well-meaning. I — and I love his boldness and it’s great." And Rick Perry: "Herman, I love you, brother, but let me tell you something: You don’t have to have a big analysis to figure this thing out." And Mitt Romney: "I like your chutzpah on this, Herman, but I have to tell you, the analysis I did, person by person, return by return, is that middle- income people see higher taxes under your plan." And Newt Gingrich: "[F]irst of all, I think that Herman Cain deserves a lot of credit. He’s had the courage to go out and take a specific, very big idea — at the right level — and he has us — he has us at least talking about something that matters."

That's great. White dudes acting like the old black guy is a child. Hand those bastards a mint julep. There could have been a fuckin' banjo playing behind them.

2. Of course, Cain did say the following in the span of about two minutes: "This is — this is an example of mixing apples and oranges. The state tax is an apple. We are replacing the current tax code with oranges. So it’s not correct to mix apples and oranges...No. That’s an apple...We are replacing a bunch of oranges...He was mixing apples and oranges...Governor Romney, you are doing the same thing that they’re doing. You’re mixing apples and oranges...Whether you throw out the existing code and you put in our plan, you’re still going to pay that. That’s apples and oranges."

Vote for Herman Cain: A man with the tenacity to never bail on a shitty metaphor.

3. Michele Bachmann is still gloriously, weirdly dumb and apocalyptic. She's like the guest you invite to a party because you know that, no matter what, she's gonna do something crazy, like hump the ice sculpture. There was her geography fuck-up: "[Obama] put us in Libya. He is now putting us in Africa." (If you don't know why that's a fuck-up, get a globe, dumbass.) Actually, that's probably more of a racist thing: Uganda, Africa, same difference.

Then there was this: "If we give Congress a 9 percent sales tax, how long will it take a liberal president and a liberal Congress to run that up to maybe 90 percent?" The highest tax on goods anywhere is 25.5% in Iceland, and that's a VAT, which is a bit more comprehensive in what it's based on than a simple sales tax. So, umm, maybe in some fantasy of a liberal fascist America of Bachmann's deranged mind it might go to 90%, but chances are pretty damn low here in what we might colloquially call "reality."

4. Mitt Romney does not like being interrupted. Man, that Mormon motherfucker looked like he was about to Hulk out of his temple garments when Perry started in on him over a report from 2007 that Romney had used a landscaping company that hired illegal immigrants. Romney was having none of it, laughing like he was gonna cut a bitch, and then going red-faced and yelling when Perry kept in on him.

You know what the real story is? No, it ain't that Romney kept using the company for a year after. It ain't even Romney's pussy statement he said he told the company, "I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals," which means that it's apparently okay to "have illegals" if you're not running for president.

No, the real story is that the company was hired for, among other things, "clearing debris from Romney's tennis court." How is that not even a little eyebrow raising? (Easy there, Ron Paul.)

Oh, and Romney revealed that he's really a walking dick.

5. The most disgustingly pandering moment of the debate? When Romney and Perry joined Ron Paul in opposing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada. It was a Republican Congress in 2002 along with George W. Bush who approved the project (and the ball got rolling under Ronald Reagan). It was Harry Reid and then President Obama who halted it. Paul has some credibility because he actually voted against it.

Once again, hey, Republicans, good work. Have fun in the general election.

2011-10-18T17:16:00.002-04:00

Not Bothering with Pat Buchanan (In Brief):
The Rude Pundit was gearing up to write a bunch of truly terrible things about depraved, plump Nazi Pat Buchanan. In his most recent "column" (and then the Rude Pundit would have inserted an "if you mean by 'column'" image that would have seared your eyeholes), Buchanan goes full-on white supremacist, meaning "believing in the supremacy of white people."

But, truly, when someone who is still considered a major media figure writes, as Buchanan did, "Can Western civilization survive the passing of the European peoples whose ancestors created it and their replacement by Third World immigrants? Probably not, for the new arrivals seem uninterested in preserving the old culture they have found," well, one's time would be better spent masturbating to particularly racy episodes of Gilligan's Island. (Professor or Mary Ann? Professor or Mary Ann?) Why bother with the pathetic rantings of a pathetic old man who should have died in his pathetic past that he pathetically says is so much better than today.

So, instead of engaging in a shit-wallow with the words of a pile of garbage, the Rude Pundit offers his appearance on yesterday's Stephanie Miller Show, where he said one or two things about Occupy Wall Street that are actually relevant to the future of the nation.

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2011-10-18T11:28:00.003-04:00

Late Post Today:
The Rude Pundit's gotta rewrite the words of "Imagine" to praise beer, just like John Lennon would want. Back in a bit with more inebriated rudeness.

2011-10-17T11:59:00.000-04:00

Herman Cain Celebrates His Appearance on Meet the Press: A Fantasia:
"Pour that hot cheese on my nipples," Herman Cain told the big-titted whore holding a freshly baked pizza over his chest. "You gotta do it now, before the grease congeals." The whore giggled nervously as she tilted a slice so that a white band of cheese dribbled off slowly, approaching the Republican presidential frontrunner's exposed flesh. When the mozzarella blend hit the areola, Cain yelped and laughed, shouting, "Yeah. Aw, shit. Now put some of that pepperoni oil on my balls and lick it off."

Cain had the hooker - Sophie? Sarah? Salty? Who the fuck cares since sluts don't use their real names - waiting for him at his suite at the Four Seasons for when he returned from his debut on NBC's Sunday morning gab show, Meet the Press. The prostitute, whose name was actually Audrey but went professionally as "Sadie," thought the pizza was going to be for lunch.

"Goddamn, how I tricked 'em all," Cain told Sadie when he arrived and dismissed his handlers, who were used to this part of the day. "Did you see me?" Sadie lied and said she had and why didn't he just come over to the bed. He ignored her. "Some of that shit, damn. I actually said to a national audience, 'Suppose one breadmaker says, "I'm going to charge $2.20 for a loaf of bread," and the other one says he's going to charge $2.40 for a loaf of bread. Well, guess which one is going to win out based upon the quality being essentially the same?' I actually said that shit, shit that schoolchildren know about money." He laughed heartily.

Fooling people is what Herman Cain has always been about. Making 'em buy shitty food. Making 'em think he's a man of the people. He ran a pizza business named "Godfather's," a patently offensive name, one that evoked mobsters even as it served Italian-ish food. If a white candidate had been CEO of Sambo's, he'd've never seen the light of day. Now, Cain makes money through motivational speaking, which is shorthand for "rubes pay me to say bullshit."

It's all about marketing, you know, keeping it simple. Cain used to market poison; his products are responsible for more deaths in America than al-Qaeda. But that doesn't stop him. "9-9-9," Cain said to Sadie, finally beginning to undress. "You hear how much everyone talks about it? Talking like there's anything behind that other than it's easy to say." He smirked and said, "9-9-9" first in a flat Minnesota accent and then in a Texas one. "Buncha fuckin' retards we got running for president."

In some ways, Cain had to admit, he's as surprised as anyone. Dropping his pants and folding them over a chair, he remarked, "I just had a book coming out. I just wanted to jack up my speaking fees. I thought I'd do a few debates and be done. This is god-damned funny." He loves that, as a black Republican, his never-elected-to-anything self gets more face time than all the black Democrats in Congress combined. And that's not even counting Fox.

"All right, all right, here we go," he moaned to Sadie, gesturing at his erect penis. "You just jack me off right onto that extra large combo pie." Sadie felt a bit disturbed at the request, but she had heard worse. She had been forced to eat food after Mike Huckabee had chewed it. Sarah Palin had once ridden her like a pony, swatting her ass until it bled with a riding crop while Todd fucked himself with a vibrator in the corner. So she diligently yanked away, and when she sensed Cain was about to orgasm, she moved the pizza box so that the pie caught the full amount of his ejaculation. "You deliver that to over to NBC. Tell 'em it's compliments of the Herminator," he said, as he quickly dressed.

He had to get going. He had a meeting with Roger Ailes about his next job.

2011-10-17T11:53:00.001-04:00

Late Post Today:
The Rude Pundit's gotta clean all the dead Mexicans off his electric fence. (Aw, c'mon, it was just a joke. Let Herman Cain laugh at you.)

Back later with more stunning rudeness.

2011-10-14T10:27:00.003-04:00

Photos That Point to the Inevitable Action Against the Occupation:

There's many pictures that the Rude Pundit could have chosen to end this week of the anti-Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. He could have shown you the people with brooms and scrub brushes getting down and cleaning the shit out of the park, making it cleaner than nearly every other park in the city. He could have showed you more of the great signs (his favorite from his visit yesterday: "I'll Believe Corporations Are People When Texas Executes One"). He could have shown you various people: the man standing on the corner, reading the entire U.S. Constitution to indifferent passersby or the rapper David Banner talking to the platinum blonde folk singer or the woman dressed as Marie Antoinette. He could have shown you the General Assembly when it was announced that Occupy Wall Street was going to resist the efforts of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the NYPD to enforce a demand by Brookfield Global Real Estate that the park be vacated for a power-hose washing. The speakers were resolved and eloquent in relaying the information they had, which was amplified in waves by the human microphone of everyone there ("This is an occupation," said one, "not a permitted picnic"), along with the plan to link arms and blockade the park in the early morning today, which turned out to not be necessary once Brookfield backed down.

Instead, the Rude Pundit chose this photo from today when, filled with the power that comes from winning a confrontation, the protesters marched up and down Broadway, heading towards the blocked-off and heavily-guarded Wall Street, while some of the police, cockblocked by Brookfield, had to relieve their aggro urges on the marchers.

Why this one? Because it is inevitable that there will be violence. The very movements that Occupy Wall Street is based on, in Egypt, in Spain, all faced violent confrontations with the police (or the military). Whether it happens now or, as numbers inevitably dwindle when it gets really fucking cold in the winter, in a revived spring of 2012, it will happen, and on a larger scale than it has happened already.

This is not said as a way to discourage the movement. No, in fact quite the opposite. It's just to say they should be ready for it, as the occupiers were ready for arrest this morning. Hopefully, as part of the training sessions in non-violent resistance that were held yesterday, they included how to look into the vicious face of the cop using the only power he's been allowed to wield as the protesters do the same.

Here's last night's Cheater and the Rude, where the Rude Pundit reports from Zuccotti Park and Jeff Kreisler reports from Occupy DC:

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2011-10-13T10:38:00.003-04:00

Really? We're Doing Herman Cain Now? Okay, Fine...:

Honestly, the only reason the Rude Pundit is writing this is so he has an excuse to post that photo, which is from a 1988 Ebony magazine profile of Herman Cain, back when he was the god of Godfather's Pizza, just because it's pretty damn funny, doncha think?

So we're gonna indulge this now? Is this what we've moved onto? We're gonna spend the next week or so talking about whether or not Herman Cain can win the Republican nomination for president? And whether or not he could win in an election? Really? 'Cause the GOP's going through flavors of the month faster than Baskin-Robbins (Aw, yeah, high five anyone?).

No, really, please. Let's go ahead and pretend that one of the other candidates is gonna beat Mitt Romney, who has been as inevitable a 2012 nominee as Barack Obama. Let's just keep playing this game of seriously looking at proposals that are nonsensical and personalities who passed borderline on the way to crazytown. We were told by the pundidioits that Michele Bachmann was gonna be our mad queen. We were told that Rick Perry was absolutely going to ass rape every other nominee and ride his horse into the White House. That's not to mention the Chris Christie and Sarah Palin diversions.

So now it's Cain as the Romney-killer, with his bullshit 9-9-9 plan (mentioned no less than 24 times at this week's GOP circle jerk), his lack of anything beyond food business experience (oh, and time at the Kansas City Federal Reserve), and his failed Senate campaign (where he lost his party's nomination). You know this egotistical fucker ran for president in 2000? And he built up his resume' since then by having a talk radio show and doing motivational speaking. You couldn't name the president of Uzbekistan either, you elitist fuck, if you spent your life making money serving steaming piles of horseshit, either on a pizza pan or in a burger box or in a hotel conference room to the corporate tools who bought your time.

Cain is this year's Perot. He's Donald Trump with nothing better to do with his time right now. And he's now leading Romney in some polls, like Perry had, like Christie had, blah, blah, blah. But, hey, GOP, go ahead and play around. It's not like any of you are gonna beat Obama. This whole nomination process is all about your party's identity crisis.

What everyone should be asking is not whether or not Herman Cain can win. Instead, the question should be "How fucked is it that we're talking about him?"