Monday, June 13, 2011

No Country For Sane Me - Monday, June 13, 2011

No Country For Sane Men

  No Country For Sane Men
    One Man's Journey Into The Mind Of America


"I saw "No Country ..." in my inbox as I was on my way out the door this morning but wanted to wait until I had time to savor." J&BH

Good Wednesday Morning,

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I must warn you that there is a lot of sex in this issue.

America is more sexually repressed than the Vatican and a little mindless (but protected!) sex would do us all some good.

Another week has gone by and by the very grace of some deity or other, or just plain luck, we're all still here. But there has been an uptick in weirdness across the American landscape centered mostly on NY Congressman Anthony Weiner's weener, closely followed by Newt Gingrich's lack of one, being politically neutered by the resignation of his campaign staff. On top of all that little Iowa, the state whose egocentricity has made it the epicenter of all thing political on the Presidential level has found itself adrift in a lonely sea of wheat and barley, largely ignored by early presidential contenders and the mass media hysteria that follows such things.

Weiner's Weener.

So, let's talk about Mr. Weiner's weener for a moment since if I don't I will have missed a golden opportunity to get on this over-crowded bandwagon to hell:
First off, that dude is buff! Second, he hangs to the Left as you'd expect from a Democrat. And third, his 'seeking treatment' line is standard political procedure when you're not going to win the argument because the noise is so loud. The only thing he's seeking right now is legal advice.

But anyway, who the hell cares if he's sending text messages to this woman or that woman? It's really none of (y)our business. And as far as I know 17 is legal in New York state. (See here, NY Penal Law Section 130.05 and here.) The 17 year old woman - who has been following Wiener's Twitter account for quite some time -  lives in Delaware, a state that tries minors as young as 14 as adults unless they're corporations and then justice truly is blind.
Considering that the nation is tottering on social and economic collapse, that the talking heads and pundits think Weiner's Weener is of import to anyone underscores the vacuousness of the American political and social landscape - at least that brought to us by the mainstream corporate media, specifically FOXNews and the NY Post and TMZ and... and... 

It also tells me that the folk out there demanding he resign from Congress are keen on the prospect of keeping you occupied with circuses as they screw you while you look the other way. Ouch! Yeah, I'll bet you didn't expect it from both ends at the same time.
If you're on the weener story, get some hand cream and leave the rest of us alone.

And would someone please send the entire staff of FOX News to Iran or Syria so they can get a dose of actual reality?

As the World Turns

In the meantime, over in Pakistan a video-tape surfaced of an unarmed man being shot in a public park by military units who left him there to bleed to death. The Syrian government has killed hundreds, tortured more and is now shelling towns and villages to quell pro-democracy demonstrations while thousands flee into Turkey. In Saudi Arabia women are arrested for driving cars. In Egypt, army officers forced women arrested for demonstrating against government corruption to undergo "virginity tests". Hamas has closed the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, imposed a 25% tariff on automobile imports from Israel and has been stealing medical supplies for private resale to a point where hospitals in Gaza have run out of such basics as rubbing alcohol and Leftists are once again planning another "flotilla" to "break" the non-existent blockade they say Israel maintains on that independent little nation.

American industrialists are buying up huge swaths of rain forest in Brazil  in order to 'farm' fresh water, the oil of the 21st century. And China has declared the United States already in default. I guess that means no more cheap crap made with toxic materials by slave labor. Damn. What's Wal*Mart and the NASCAR set going to do now?

Closer to home, the Federal Reserve office in Richmond, VA is flying a rainbow flag in honor of diversity month and Republicans in that state's house are drekking crucifixes. State Delegate Bob Marshall said,
"[Homosexual behavior] undermines the American economy . . . shortens lives, adds significantly to illness, increases health costs, promotes venereal diseases, and worsens the population imbalance relating to the number of workers supporting the beneficiaries of America’s Social Security and Medicare Programs."
By his definition, and assuming I lived past 25, my body oozing syphilis and 40 million old people screaming for my head, I should have been tried and shot for treason. Tell me Mr. Marshall doesn't need a vacation on Fire Island. With a GHB drip in his arm. At a BDSM convention. In the Pines. At night. Alone...

In South Memphis, TN on June 5, a man brought a gun to a children's birthday party and threatened the host because his kid didn't get any ice cream or cake.

And are you ready for this... On August 6th, Texas governor Rick Perry is hosting a day of prayer and fasting sponsored by the American Family Association, a well known racist, homophobic hate group, at Reliant Stadium in Houston. But that's nothing. Get this: The infamous Westboro Baptist Church, an even better known hate group is going to picket the event!

Here, this from Dallas Voice:

Phelps

I love this country! It's a laugh-a-minute ride through absurdity. And we're just starting....

This Week's Letter to the Editor:

Found in the New York Journal News, a Gannett paper based in White Plains, New York on June 10:
Republican virtues will save society

Regarding Hamiltonian capitalism, Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "It mortifies me to be strengthening principles which I deem radically vicious, but this vice is entailed on us from the first error."

The vice of homosexuality is entailed on us from the error of women's suffrage. Gay marriage is necessary because it is only fair that, if women take away men's jobs, men should take away women's husbands.

When Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, he was referring to the gender and not the species. Unless our nation returns to the practice of the Republican virtues, which demand that a wife be faithful and obedient to her husband, it will only continue along the path of moral decay.

Eugene Batizat, Yonkers

Looks like we should make one more reservation for that Fire Island vacation.

Citizens 4 Freedom

Copyright Citizens4freedom.comAh yes! Another group of scared white men and the women who bring them beer. If they're defenders of freedom then they should be willing to extend that freedom to others. But nooooo....

They don't, for example, support the freedom to marry whom you want.

In fact they're encouraging their members to "...call Senator Greg Ball's Office in Brewster [NY] to let him know that we DO NOT SUPPORT 'Marriage Equality' here in New York."

What kind of freedom is that?

And it's odd, too, that their Facebook page says, "Your country needs you to stand up for her rights and freedoms that are being repeatedly threatened," and here they are doing the very thing they claim to be against. Then they have the chutzpah to quote Geo. Washington, "The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves." and as much as I'd like to be a free man these 'citizens 4 freedom' are telling me that I cannot be.

But they're Tea Baggers, as they claim all over their website and Facebook page, which just underscores the rumors.

Perhaps the problem is they're so busy tea bagging each other that if they would just remove their balls off their faces they could see just how ridiculous they look, sound and act. They're not fighting for "freedom". What they're fighting for is the freedom to be afraid.

Boo!

Down in Virginia the "Roanoke Tea Party" group rails against land/open space preservation as an attack on property rights. Never mind that if they get their way they won't have anything to shoot at come hunting season. But careful thought about what we leave our children should not get in the way of in-the-moment hysteria. Besides, they think saving land from development and bio-diversity corridors are part of a secret United Nations plan to take over the United States and institute a one-world government. Well guess again guys, we already have a one-world government and it's called ExxonGeneralMotorsBankofAmerica and it's (not) funny how you like those guys.

Out in Idaho the Tea Baggers are up in arms over a proposed international trade zone just south of the Boise, ID airport claiming that the 50 sq miles(!) on which they warn the Chinese will build a "piece of communist China inside the borders of the United States" is going to be a base from which they will export communism.

So take a few facts, skew them just a tiny bit and there you have it, a new reality based on... on... I'm speechless.

The sad thing is that they're not alone: thousands of Americans have fallen victim to the fear and ignorance that has allowed the tea baggers to spread across the nation like the mindless, rabid reactionaries they are. They suck in the weak and bewildered, the fearful and the meek, and give them an outlet for their phobias, an outlet which serves no one but the corporations who fund them.

And when I see the protest sign, "This Country Began as a Tax Revolt" I know how little they understand about how this country came about in the first place. Sure, it was a tax revolt. But it was a tax revolt of the rich and powerful against the richer and more powerful, not of the common citizenry. It was a revolt to allow the industrialists of the day to make even more money off the backs of their workers without having to share their profits with the British government.

Perhaps one day they'll awaken from their personal nightmares and come to the realization that what they have brought upon the land is a political blight their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have to deal with. Perhaps they'll slap their foreheads and say, "Shit! What a mess we've created!" But I don't think so.

JmG

Copyright © 2011 No Country For Sane Men
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