The Thrust of His Porcupine
Another reader of this blog (Heather's husband) has written to take me to task. Or, shall we say, several of them? There's no comprehensive way to address all of Maarten's many points and complaints except to answer in general. And I would begin by making the essential point that Maarten is an "internationalist." Nothing he says can be appreciated in full without knowing that he wishes the world to be a borderless, global society of former nations. ("Former" because they will have all surrendered their sovereignty to the greater good of internationalism.) This reminds us of Einstein's contempt for nationalism as an infantile notion. But it also reminds me that Utopia literally means "no where" ---and that's the one place where "internationalists" and other such sophistos feel most at home. The post-nationalist and indistinguishable world frightens me, and I would only be a stranger there, never a citizen.

I say all this to make the point that, in the real world, there are winners and losers and that there is nothing Utopians and internationalists (i.e., people who have a loathing for their own particular places of origin) can do about it. Sameness and equality and indistinction are anathema to individuals of will and self-determinancy. Winners make losers of their enemies because there are great issues of human dignity and value at stake and these cannot be dispensed with by resort to moral relativism. Why would a great culture such as ours set its sights on the overthrow of a tyrant like Saddam? Because he is an enemy to human freedom and dignity. Maarten, of course, laughs at the very idea that this country should care for liberty and democracy in places like Iraq, but that's because he is an embittered cynic. He doesn't know enough of our purpose as Americans. He was not taught his Lincoln or about the "last, best hope of Earth." We are a light unto the nations (Oops. Sorry about the drippingly Christian language, Heather.), but we are also an instrument of justice. These cosmopolitan types who are too busy being correct and sensitive are living in a state of unnature, as it were; they don't know enough about geopolitics.

Anyhow, there are too many liberals and sophistos out there thinking too much of their own rigteousness and being too pathologically absorbed with hating the President. I would suggest that these feelings of righteous indignation are too often the result of either paranoid ignorance or partisan hypocrisy. Yes, yes: the Bush Administration is just one big cabal of oilmen and Freemasons and Trilateralists. They stole the election from Gore because the President's brother was the governor of Florida and he must have set it all up, right? Right? It's devastatingly pathetic thinking like that that drives me insane. But it only gets worse when you turn to the war against Iraq. It was all done to provide huge contracts to Haliburton or Brown & Root or whoever the fuck. I guess our military screwed it up by not allowing even a fraction of the oil well fires that the alarmists were prophesying.

And, of course, all of that intelligence that was used and abused by Bush and Blair as a pretext for having it out with Saddam was all fabricated. Never mind that Saddam has twice (and, now, probably thrice) been stopped from developing nuclear weapons. Never mind that even pieces of shit like Hans Blix and that traitor/child molester ex-Marine (whose name I can't recall just now) acknowledged that there were huge amounts of bioweapons unaccounted for when the inspectors were finally driven out of Iraq in 1998. Are there really dumbasses in this world who believe that Saddam would have destroyed all of his WMD without telling anyone, thereby denying himself the credit by which he could have ended all of the sanctions against his country? It's fucking stupidity. Of course there are bioweapons in Iraq! Pull your head out!

Let me finish this little rant with the old philosopher's question, "What good is a baby?" All they do is eat, sleep, poop, and cry. And this goes on and on for months. What the hell good are they? It may be that what good we have done in Iraq is also difficult to see because all of its value lies in its potential, not in its essence. It is entirely possible that Iraq will become an ally and friend to the United States in years to come once its physical and political infrastructure has been repaired. That happened in Japan and in Germany; why is it such a joke to those like Maarten that we try it there, too?

Spitting Blood
Mood:  don't ask
I am extremely put out with the rain situation around here. You're telling me that a hurricane can come our way and we still don't get anything out of it? Outrageous crap. See, I like rain. I don't view it as a weekend-destroyer or a great hazard, but as a vital phenomenon. Any real Texan is happy to see it rain. It's good for the crops and the aquifers and it keeps the heat down. These sissified craphounds they've got doing the weather on the TV around here make me mad. It's almost like their negative energy has created a force field around the city of Austin, impervious to rain or even a cool breeze. I've given this a lot of thought and am convinced it's true.

Inexplicable
Mood:  suave
Be sure to check out this Clifford May piece at National Review Online. If you want to know what's fueling the non-story of what, I guess, is the President's outrageous slanders against Saddam and African uranium merchants, this will give you an idea.

Regarding Jon Stewart's Quip about FOX
Mood:  silly
Jon Stewart, host of the brilliant Daily Show on Comedy Central, was talking with the well-known New Age tampon/flake Bill Moyers the other day and they were beefing about how "gaslighted" the American public has been by an irresponsible media. True dat: I don't give a fuck about Scott Peterson, either, and can't understand why the 24-hour news outlets are so smitten with such irrelevance in the face of far greater issues.

Anyway, Stewart singled out and dismissed FOX News among all other American news divisions and channels because "every country needs its own al-Jazeera." (Please write to correct me if my quote is off.) That is, FOX News is so blatantly pro-conservative that it's no better than the cartoonishly pro-Arab/Jew-hating al-Jazeera Network is in the Middle East.

Well, it was a great line, but let's be clear about something: neutrality in the name of objectivity is no virtue. No news division or network is in any danger of becoming objective any time soon, so why should the public tolerate the pretenses to objectivity made by CNN or Jennings or Rather? It's a joke. The animus of these news outlets against the Bush administration is as clear as FOX's supposed cheerleading so long as you bother to recognize it. How do they get their digs in? Listen to the verbs, watch how many seconds or minutes get split between our own President and his detractors, and notice who gets let off the hook. I'd spend an hour watching test patterns before I'd give Aaron Brown or Keith Olbermann ten seconds. Ah, such wits. Cynicism over justification any day, right?

If people are concerned that they're being gaslighted, they are free to turn to other resources for their news. The profundity of this fact is often lost on clever assholes who rant and rave about our allegedly shrinking array of media choices. The truth is that there are more ways now to find out about the things that matter most to each of us than ever before. Do you doubt that as you surf between the online newspapers of practically every country on Earth or the hundreds of professional journals available at the click of a mouse or the thousands of well-maintained blogs calling out from every corner of cyberspace? Many cities and towns and every level of their government now routinely post and update information on the Internet so that you can be better-informed. I can read the full opinions of any supreme or appellate court in the land on any case I please by just looking for it online. I can participate in learned discussions on every conceivable topic of any value any time I wish.

Keep your evening newscasts, jack. There's nothing you can tell me that I couldn't have already learned from a half-dozen other sources ---if I will.

Smashing the Well-Oiled Machine
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" by the Ink Spots
My earnest and thoughtful correspondent followed up her demand for the reasons why we invaded Iraq with some more comments on my hatefulness and warmongering, but she made two big mistakes.

First, I am not a Christian. I'm sure that my moral compass largely follows the cast of its original Protestant orientation, but I do not believe in any of the things that Heather herself apparently believes in: God, the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, Biblical authority, etc. I have always been curious about why my interlocutors make this mistake. Is it because there is something unconsciously Christian in my language or is it because some (many, as I have noted over the years) lack a certain subtlety of understanding in distinguishing between religion and morality? That is to say, even Neognostikos can find fault and be offended with the doctrinal inconsistencies in the religions of others.

Second, Heather misunderstands what the well-oiled machine of Islamic culture is: it is fascism. Some writers call it Islamofascism, a term I like a lot. I would like to help smash this well-oiled machine because I find it to be threatening. What is compatible between the free will of Western man and his pursuit of happiness and the idea of "submission"? Nothing. One ideology/spiritual tradition informs its believers with a sound regard for liberty and self-salvation while the other demands rigid obedience and repression. The medieval mind is interesting ---in books. But in practice? Today? There's a spectrum of bodily behavior among montheistic man, ranging from the simplicity of the Protestant's bowed head during a prayer to the Catholic's very busy crossing and dipping and smudging and counting with fingers and knees and beads and water down to the prostrations and petty humiliations of the Mohammedan. Normally, unless he's gone medieval, a Protestant doesn't bend his knees because he isn't a slave; a Muslim does because that's how he thinks of himself.

Well, let's not be slaves. Let's be men (or women) who are free to stand on our own and cause trouble and be squeaky wheels. We are not, as you claimed, Heather, a well-oiled machine; if we were, you wouldn't have the voice to dissent or the right to travel unmolested in your own country or the happiness to imagine a single good thing. Everything would be circumscribed and homogenized and begrudged by a power-hungry fascist state. But you say we're well-oiled? No way. Not enough of us have given up yet.

Reasons
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: "Frankenstein" by the Edgar Winter Group
A reader of this blog has written to demand that I supply the good reasons why our country invaded Iraq since I'm so sure of them. (Her message is available through the comments link of a few days ago.)

Well, we're a military superpower, for one thing; if we didn't project our power abroad in those areas of the world that hate and resist us, pretty soon, we'd be perceived as weak. The United States, like all great cultures and empires, is obligated to itself and the world to wield its power against tyrants and terrorists. If we withdraw from this obligation and become the isolationists that the Democrats and liberals wish us to be, we will squander our greatness and lose the ability to right the wrongs of the world. Look at your history, Heather: Uncle Sam has saved the world many times now (i.e., by winning both World Wars and outlasting the Communists in the Cold War). We are depended on in ways no other country knows. We prop up the United Nations so that little tin-pot dictatorships and our chastened former/erstwhile allies can have a forum to tell us what sorry bastards we are. But what happens when the UN repeatedly finds that a country like Iraq is in violation of all these resolutions, but does nothing? If there's no consequences for non-compliance, then nobody is going to care. They're just like errors in baseball: looks bad on paper, but where's the punishment? Without our force or the threat of our force, Iraq would never have complied.

Okay, so I've given you a few good reasons. Kicking the bad guys' asses is what the good guys do. Putting the bite in the bark of the paper police is the only way to preserve the legitimacy of world conference. If you don't use it, you lose it. The perception of weakness is weakness. What else do you want, Heather? Now that we are in Iraq, the people there have a chance at self-government and basic civil liberties/human rights. They didn't have that before. Am I happy about our losing soldiers nearly every day there to some sort of violence? No. It makes me anxious and sad. But our soldiers are buying an entire culture the time and space to be re-born and to have what we have, which is liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Think of it! The New World is helping Mesopotamia find its dignity and self-worth again. That's pretty great.

Plus, we are in a position to apply pressure on the rest of the Middle East to find a way to lasting peace. Those governments need to be forced into it because, otherwise, they will keep on oppressing their people and retarding their progress. Iran sees what we have done in Iraq and knows that they can be done with tyranny, too. Our invasion also is making things possible in Israel that were impossible a year ago. There may be a chance at a solution there, as well. All of this has to do with geopolitical influence. I believe we have a moral obligation to keep Israel Jewish. Don't you? I believe we have an economic obligation to our own society to make sure no one can cut off our oil supplies and wreck our economy. Doesn't that make sense?

When you doubt and deny the wisdom of our decision to invade Iraq, you are defending the right of tyrants like Saddam and his regime to murder and oppress his people. You are saying that America has no obligation to stand up and fight for what is right. You are rolling over and taking it when you cast aspersions upon our political and ideological superiority. Of course we are superior to those rotten Muslim dictatorships and monrachies! How can you find yourself in the position of contradicting that truth?

Howard Dean's Saliva
Mood:  accident prone
With unprecedented precision of force and great care to spare the population, the United States and its friends went into Iraq and overthrew one of the worst tyrants of the last half-century. We were and are right to have done this for a great number of reasons, few of which are intelligible to the Springer-type voter-oid (or, to his somewhat more sophisticated cousin, the still-traumatized Floridians-for-Gore voter). But what we have now is the media desperate to open a crack in the armor of this President ---and it will do so with this terribly hot issue of whether Bush was lying to the world about the Iraqis seeking uranium from Africa. Well, let's call this what it is and be done with it.

Bush was wrong to have included this claim in his State of the Union address. It was gratuitous and, had he been more careful, he would not have used it. Someone on the TV made the good point that Bush the Elder, being the former head of the CIA, would certainly not have made such a poor choice.

Okay, so the President oversold us on all the reasons why Saddam and the Baathists needed to be driven from Iraq. Maybe he believed that the uranium claim was just one more stick of kindling to toss onto the fire to get people's attention. Regardless, this is no crime, no matter how anxious Howard Dean and the liberals are to make it one.

It just so happens that Saddam and his regime did, at one point, seek to develop a nuclear program. And it is absolutely certain that Saddam was in possession of multiple kinds of extremely dangerous chemicals and biotoxins. We still don't know the full extent of these programs or what their status was when we liberated Iraq. There are still plenty of Iraqi psychopaths that we haven't liquidated yet who, if they could, would try to use those weapons of mass murder against us and their own people. Do the self-loathing, Bush-haters doubt that? They can be angry all they want about the President's error in judgement in advertising some low-grade intelligence (now known to be false), but what does that mean in the broader context? The isolationism of the Democratic Party continues to be one of the oddest developments of the early 21st Century. Who would've guessed that the party of Wilson and FDR and Truman would be such a bunch of ostriches with their heads in the sand?

Mein Springerhass
Mood:  don't ask
Looks like Springer's actually going to do this thing and run for the U.S. Senate from Ohio. It's an absolute outrage. I don't care if he was mayor of Cincinnati or the King of Siam: he's a rotten whoremonger and a cultural disease-carrier. He has no right to cheapen the dignity of our highest institutions with his appeal to the dregs of society.

I can't explicitly advocate the one thing I would most like to see done in the case of this piece of shit, but I would laugh loud and long and dance a drunken jig if that one thing ever occurred. There ought to be consequences for what pieces of shit like Jerry Springer do to our culture. I don't permit that sort of shit in my home and I disrespect anyone who does.

Down with whoremongers and the vectors of vulgarity and ignorance. They should be burnt at the stake.

How It Will End
The world cannot long endure the ideological antagonism between Islam and the West. The former ideological division of communism and capitalism largely resolved itself, with either a sudden and traumatic change of course ---or through the gradual evolution from the state economy through the black market and into the brave new world of the free market. The artificial blocs and unions came tumbling apart in the space of only a few years, and what hasn't already disintegrated will, as I say, evolve away from the communist "ideal."

But, now, we have a new enemy: Islam. You don't want to hear that, being the fair-minded and loving humanitarian you are, but that is our new foe. Oh, you knew that neither drugs nor spam nor porno were going to keep Vulcan's fires burning; they're too ubiquitous and essential to our own character to have ever been the replacement for our struggle with the commies we needed. So here comes Islam --militant, anti-western, anti-Christian, Jew-hating Islam--- to slap us in the face and remind us that our work is never done, and that mankind's destiny is in danger so long as that religion's most violent practitioners are at liberty. Moreover, it has the far deeper roots of history and culture and the threat of God's violence inculcated into its believers' [souls] from the start that mere Leninism or Stalinism could never depend on. That is, the infection of this ideology runs too deep to ever be turned through conversion; it must be eradicated one beating heart at a time.

September 11th changed everything. Exposed a lot of shitheadedness and treachery and self-loathing among people you'd always hoped were better than that. But they aren't. They hate their own culture and they hate their own country and they're going down on their knees right along with the fez-headed floor-kissers. Apologists and cannon fodder is how I see them. Subhuman whores who go to Baghdad and chain themselves to Saddam's mosques because they were beaten and sexually abused by their fathers when they were children and don't know how to stop hating themselves. Pathetic. I won't pity you, though. Don't have enough contempt, although I should.

No, my mind is wandering over to the reason why it will end the way it will. It's because the Muslim cannot keep his mosque and his capitol apart. He still sees some virtue in treating everyone he knows just as Mohammed would: hatred for the outsider (never mind the much-storied friendliness to strangers, Jew boy: you ain't never seein' none of that), shame over women, distrust of one's own free will, etc. Governed and enslaved by a book in ways that no secularized Christian would tolerate anymore. And that's the thing: here in the Christian and post-Christian West, we've found a way to put everything where it belongs. Look at how freaked out the pricks from the ACLU get when someone suggests that we have a minute of silence in a public classroom. That's quite a bit different from your basic madrassa where the [teachers] tell the kids that Jews are monkeys and pigs, and where they all get on their knees and touch the floor with their foreheads and pray in the direction of Mecca. What a well-oiled machine. What a thing worth smashing.

Spike
I've only read a couple of short articles on the "settlement" reached by basketball fan Spike Lee and Viacom (parent company of the television network TNN) regarding the latter's move to change that network's name from TNN to Spike TV, but I detect the strong odor of extortion in what few details have emerged.

A few weeks ago, as you may vaguely recall, TNN (formerly The Nashville Network and, later, The National Network) began advertising its new name, Spike TV. Apparently, the word spike conjures up the appropriate image and style that the network was looking for in pursuing the young white male demographic.

However, all of that came to a screeching halt when two incredible things happened: Spike Lee filed a suit against Viacom for using "his" name which, somehow, caused a judge to issue an injunction in his favor.

I still don't see how that was possible, since Lee is hardly the first or even the only person or creation to sport the name Spike. What kind of a dumbass judge would have even entertained his complaint? It's absurd on its face.

Anyhow, it's all water under the bridge, for it now appears that Viacom will get to have its way and call TNN Spike ---but at a price. For, you see, Spike Lee was not so much concerned about "his" name being associated with a lot of low-brow, cracker-assed, trailer-park televison entertainment (a racist rationale, anyway), but was far more interested in the fact that he could get Viacom (a huge multimedia corporation) over a barrel and cause them some trouble. Hmmm. So, what should Viacom do to get out of trouble? Why, play some ball, Johnny! Spike will now "allow" the use of "his" name to go forward so long as Viacom enters into substantial negotiations with him in opening up its other entertainment venues, like MTV and VH1. Get it? The whole thing was an extortion bid. Ridiculous.

Congratulations, Spike: you're no better than Jesse Fucking Jackson or one of Dr. King's kids.

Then Go Back to Your Office
I'm listening to these Democratic reps on the Texas House floor complaining that they are being kept from "meaningfully" participating in the process of redrawing this state's district map, but they aren't accomplishing anything. Their participation, at this moment, is meaningless. And it's all their fault. They fucked around during the regular session with their running off to Oklahoma and not doing their jobs, and because of that the taxpayers of Texas now have to spend money we don't have to hold a special session to finish the job that should have been finished back then. Oh, what a brave bunch of civil disobeyers! Show the whole country what a bullying lot of Republicans there are in the President's home state. Not one of you lousy sword-swallowers is actually going to keep this redistricting from happening, so what the hell are you doing wasting our time? Stand up and pander to your base on my dime? Get the fuck out of here! Go rhetoricize in your head!

The district map we have now is out of date because it is gerrymandered to favor the Democratic Party, which is no longer the dominant electoral party in this state. Look at the numbers, you dopes. More Republicans are voting here than ever before. The Governor, the Lt. Governor, the Speaker, and every major statewide office in Texas is held by a Republican. Is it possible that you crybabies imagined that the GOP's dominance wasn't going to be reflected in our federal legislative delegation?

You've already lost. The map will change regardless of your nonsense. Apologize to us for causing this special session to be called and go back to lobbying each other until you blow back into town in '05.

The Infantilization of the Texas Democratic Party
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: "Low Rider" by War
As I've pointed out before, the Texas state rep Richard Raymond (D-Laredo) is a personally likable guy, but his behavior in all this quorum-killing and race-baiting that the Texas Democratic Party is engaged in is simply outrageous. There is nothing honorable or clever or constructive in what these fucking morons have done, and Richard's been front and center during this whole thing. The state party has handled its electoral "demotion" with an astonishing lack of maturity, but that is what happens when your party conceives of itself as a clearinghouse for ethnic identity politics and the celebration of victimization. You say you're "entitled" to be heard at every turn in this redistricting mess because you're Latino? What a joke! Nobody around here gives a good damn who your parents are, Richard. Grow up and face the reality of the situation: the Republican Party (and if there was ever a case where the phrase "for now" applied, it would be here) has become the majority party in this state. Are you really such a two year-old that you can't accept the logic of this state's Congressional caucus also being Republican-controlled? You don't seem to have any trouble recognizing the legitimacy of proportional representation in other areas of political life, so what's your malfunction here?

It may be of some slight interest to the reader to know that, when I was an operative with the TDP back in the mid 90s, I met Richard Raymond and a good many other state politicians. Part of my job was working with these people and getting the best possible information on who was voting for the party. In far too many cases, it wasn't Latinos who were voting. And it wasn't blacks, either. Politicans like Richard need to keep their districts configured to maximize the effect of ghettoized or balkanized ethnic groups because, if districts were simply organized along the most logical and geographical lines, white voters would overwhelm these minority groups. That's a stone fact. Actual, by-the-numbers competition would kill these ethno-politicians.

By the way, Lloyd Doggett the U.S. Representative from Travis County, Texas, makes me sick. It's okay for him to go ahead and stick his dick in the mashed potatoes, but God forbid that Tom De Lay get in on the action, too.

Let's hear it for a majority-Republican Congressional caucus from a Republican-majority state! Yeee-haaaa!!!!

Letters of the Law
I've read a few articles lately dissenting from the current Supreme Court's decision to overturn the states' anti-sodomy laws and the chief argument always seems to be that the Constitution does not guarantee any right to gay sex. This is the very face of the "strict constructionist" ---and it represents the very worst of conservatism.

Strict constructionists ignore the many thousands of statutes and regulations established and enforced by the Federal government that have no discernable origin in the Constitution and, yet, there they are, uncontroversial and morally neutral. It must be the wider-ranging interpretive authority of the judiciary that strict constructionists balk at, but why? They can't actually doubt that laws must be interpreted, can they? If every contingency and circumstance of criminal and civil law could be anticipated with mathematical certainty, the executive could force out the judiciary with the end of its abacus.

So, why is a judiciary necessary? At the higher, more abstract end of the spectrum of the answer is the fact that laws and regulations sometimes outlive the social context in which they were first drafted; judgements must sometimes be rendered in cases and places where a politicized legislative body is unwilling to abolish a foolish and unpopular law. A black slave, for example, is no longer considered three-fifths of a human being for the purposes of calculating a state's number of representatives because, obviously, no black person (at least on this continent) is still a slave. Historical reality superseded the law.

Nor is the Constitution an absolutely perfect document in other ways. It did not spring from the forehead of Zeus or was drawn from a stone like Excalibur. It, too, has been monkeyed with over the decades (e.g., the Prohibition amendments) or been necessarily emended (e.g., the amendment providing for the succession to the Presidency), so it is not as though the Constitution is above interpretation or expansion.

Conservatives making a Constitutional argument against the repeal of the anti-sodomy laws are out of step with the historical reality of gay rights. If they wish to make this case a proving ground against other left-to-libertarian social attitudes and practices, they are making a huge error. Next will come the gay marriage laws and we shall see just how reciprocal the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution truly is. Conservatives and the Christian right and whoever else are going to have to face the reality of gay rights, whether they approve or not.

Strict constructionism is a loser of an argument, friends. Every time some otherwise reasonable conservative commentator or legislator or executive starts up with what the Constitution "allows," they make everyone else uneasy. For instance, if you want to see conservatism collapse at the ballot box, just pipe up about how Roe v. Wade is "bad Constitutional law." The conservative may, in the strictest sense, be correct, but will being correct be enough to pay the bills when his ass is out of office?

Roach Hotel...on FOX!
Mood:  spacey
I just woke up from a good long nap and the first thing I see on the TV is a preview of next week's Paradise Hotel, which is apparently a reality show featuring lab rats (i.e., 20-something sluts of both genders) performing for cameras (infrared in the bedrooms, of course) and idly poking at the little levers for some tasty pellets. What fucking garbage. I want a reality show where I take these kids and the soulless pimps who vetted and hired them and stick them in a darkened chamber where I can lecture them before I release the Zyklon B gas.

"This reality show should only have taken a few minutes," I intone over the PA system, "but I've padded it out to sitcom-length so that the cud-chewers watching at home will have something to [think] about.

"I am murdering all of you on film and taking plenty of close-ups so that your tortured expressions will keep me warm at night.

"The children are right to applaud me, Ralph. But this disgusting nonsense ends here and now."

It's impossible for normal people to appreciate the narcissism and sociopathy of those involved in these televised splayings of the emotional labia of the witting retarded, but it keeps the beer-drinking public feeling better about itself, so look away when you pull even with the wreck and pray that Toutatis strikes.

Toutatis, strike.

Robert Mapplethorpe's Love Loaf
I hear the Democratic Party's going to put another feather in its cap when that awful whoremonger Jerry Springer runs for the U.S. Senate from Ohio. What an incredible embarrassment! It makes Sonny Bono look like the second coming of Daniel Webster. But you just watch the "party of the people" in Ohio stand by and let a piece of crap like Springer take the nomination. The other night, I watched a bit of Geraldo River (the former Jerry Rivers) interviewing Springer and bringing up the sleaze factor and Springer says it's not about him, but about his ideas. Ha, ha. Right: noblesse oblige from the man who hosts miscegenated teenaged sluts and their stripper mothers for the delectation of unemployed drug addicts who enjoy starting their days watching people on TV marginally more fucked up than they are. There are more reasons to hate Springer (and the unironically condescending Geraldo) than there are seconds in a day, but if you want the latest and best reason to disrespect the Democratic Party, wait until they run Jerry Springer for the Senate. Is there any wonder why there's a billion psychotic fezheads out there out for our blood?

Election Night 1996
Wanted to share with you the wisdom of the late David Brinkley. I actually remember watching him make these remarks on live television. Every one of his colleagues turned in their seats like Brinkley had just ripped one. Cowards.

On Clinton's victory: "I wish to say that we all look forward with great pleasure to four more years of wonderful, inspiring speeches, full of wit, poetry, music, love and affection ---and more goddamned nonsense....Bill Clinton has [no creativity]. He has not a creative bone in his body. Therefore, he is a bore and will always be a bore."

Tee hee. Love that man. I'm just sorry that he felt the need to apologize to that used car salesman the next day.

"File-Swapping Is Cool, Daddy, and You Know It!"
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Some Shit I Stole, Yo!
I hear that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is about to start suing hundreds of users of peer-to-peer music file-swapping networks to intimidate them out of copyright-infringement. Well, all I can say to that is "Good luck, dumbasses!" How many fingers does that little Dutch boy have? I mean, there are hundreds of hack-happy slackers out there just dying to be the one who starts up the next generation of p2p networks that operate on full anonymity. There's nothing the RIAA can really do to stop what's happening.

It may be that file-swapping is killing the recording industry, but that's only because the recording industry has been making a killing forever. Some of these "artists" have been given everything by the big corporations and the only way to justify it is to keep the price of albums artificially high. Eighteen bucks for a Jennifer Lopez album from Sam Goodys or Camelot Music? Get the fuck out of here, you fucking thieves. I'm looking at a large stack of CDs I got for twenty bucks and a big fat coax cable and I'm thinking something tells me I'm into something good, beeatch. Oh, and fuck Herman's Hermits, too.

You want the real story behind the decline of the recording industry? There's an immense amount of unlistenable horseshit out there. That's it. That's the whole of it. If someone were to shove the American Top 40 (do they even have that anymore?) in my face and threaten me with death to hum a few bars of any one of those songs, I couldn't do it. Songwriting has absolutely and undeniably died. Pop music is now solely the domain of untalented and uncreative young black people. It's an enormously embarrassing passage in the history of American music these days. The only songs that it's even possible to like are re-makes of songs I grew up with. What are today's kids going to grow up to remember? Nothing created by those of their own generation, that's for sure.

I hope that file-swapping destroys the music business so that it will have to resort to such things as promoting talent that can actually create its own music in a live setting. I'll take it up the slopchute for a thirty dollar ticket or a twenty dollar tee-shirt if the band who's doing it makes me give a damn five minutes after I've heard 'em play their hearts out for me.

Victor Davis Hanson Is God
Mood:  loud
Now Playing: "Pollo Asado" by Ween
One of my favorite writers at National Review Online is Victor Davis Hanson. And, today, he is on fire:

"We must accept that it is a cornerstone of Mexican foreign policy to export illegally each year a million of its own to the United States to avoid needed reform at home and to influence American domestic policy."

That is as clear and concise an assessment of what we are faced with as any I've ever read. Man, when I was younger, I was absolutely inflamed against that whole situation. Pissed at the left for adulterating white Protestant culture and pissed at the right for betraying our society for the sake of cheap labor. Where did my anger go? Maybe it was in the incubator for a while, but the power went out and they had to throw out all the spoiled passions. That's what happens when you "grow up." Things are left to slide and the old Irish has to get tamped down to keep the neighbors from calling the cops.

But take it from one who was steeped in venom and gall: there's Mexican politicians and bandleaders out there who think and talk as naturally as breathing about the reality of la raza and Aztlan. Don't you fucking doubt it, holmes. It'll do you and us no good to ignore it, although that is what is happening. You'd just better hope they lose their tongues and crucifixes faster than we lose our will to fight or the demographic beast will consume this culture from the inside out. You gotta cut that shit with some Cotton Mather and Woodrow Wilson and some other uptight honky-assed bidness if you want there to be some semblance of Lincoln's last, best hope of Earth left at century's end.

Tops Have Bottoms!
Mood:  cheeky
The United States Supreme Court says that Texas' anti-sodomy laws are unConstitutional and that y'all can assume the position once again in freedom and pleasure.

And now I am wondering why they can't declare involuntary celibacy a crime against humanity (or, maybe just a crime against me).

Legal Query
Mood:  not sure
Is there a law against me sending a sealed tin of dog shit to Molly Ivins? Maybe one that's labelled as her favorite brand of sweeties or snuff so that she'll eagerly pry it open and it will unload all over her? I think she's a lousy old hag of a poser. She had a column in the paper the other day about how fascinating Sidney Blumenthal's new book on the Clinton years is and how the "vast right-wing conspiracy" was the prime mover in Clinton's disgrace and impeachment. Well, that's a lot of nonsense, lady. Clinton himself was the cause of all his problems. The longer you repress that fact, the more I'm going to laugh at your yellow dog shit democrat-ism. You and Hightower and your whole bunch of liberal "populists" are a joke.