The Worldwide Leader In Dumb

I really should stop watching TV news. I can't stop though, I'm a news junkie. But it is so easy to get pissed at these people. The real problem today is not the so-called "liberal bias," which is not even close to being true anyway. No, it is the dumbing down, not just of the news, but of the people hired to read the news.

Now I've gone off on the idiot weatherman Chad Myers before, and he keeps proving his stupidity. For some reason CNN keeps rewarding his idiocy by giving him more responsibility, and a shiny new desk and studio. They had Mr. Hair Gel pull up the radar showing the planes in the air during the whole British situation last week. He was pointing out that there were not very many planes coming to the U.S. from England on that day because most had been canceled. He pointed out the few that there were, although I'm still not sure why other than he likes showing off the neato new computer CNN bought him, going from over the States first and moving east toward the UK. On the last one he pointed out he said, "...this one that just departed and is now over Scotland" while pointing to Ireland.

Fuck he's a moron. And nobody corrected the guy. Shit like that is just so damn annoying. People bitch and moan all the time that high school kids today can't pick out countries on the map or label all the states or some other thing that they should know. But shit, this is a lot worse. First, he's a weatherman, his whole life is about maps. How could he not know the difference between Ireland and Scotland? Second, he's in the media, he is responsible for information. And come on, can't they at least talk in his ear and tell him to correct himself when he does stupid shit like that? I'm guessing that nobody else even noticed, which means the producers of the news are no smarter than the pretty-boys hired to read it.

I just wonder where all the smart people in the media are, because it seems to me that used to be a requirement to get the job. But not any more. Instead, we get mind-numbing stupidity of the likes of Soledad O'Brien, Carol Costello, and Carol Lin, a trio of women whose role in the world should be spritzing you with perfume at the make-up counter in Macy's. Instead, they report on the important issues of the day. Well, sometimes. If there's time between the reports on Tom Cruise's new baby.

Though as annoying as those three are, they pale in comparison to the air-headedness of Betty Nguyen. How this giggly bimbo ever got a job other than hosting Tupperware parties or selling Amway I will never understand.

And don't even get me started on Miles O'Brien. Who did he have to fuck to get his career?

CNN has spent a lot of money recently on big new sets with fancy (and really annoying) video screens. You'd think they could spare 20 bucks for a goddamn world atlas for Chad Myers.

Or hey, what about hiring people with half a brain? There's a novel idea.

GOP Joe

A friend sent me this article today from the Wall Street Journal. A subscription is required to read the whole thing, it is basically one of Joe Lieberman's political buddies, Lanny Davis, accusing the opponents of Lieberman of conducting "liberal McCarthyism," acting like a left version of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter & Michael Savage and, most seriously, anti-Semitism.

He defends Lieberman with the line, "...Sen. Lieberman's record as a progressive (emphasis mine)Democrat and his opposition to President Bush not only on most domestic issues but also on the conduct of the war cannot be disputed..."

I wasn't going to really weigh in on the Lieberman primary race because, let's face it, it has been talked about and blogged about to death. But I couldn't help writing about this jerk-off's editorial. Both for the ridiculous anti-Semite charge and the reference to Lieberman as a "progressive."

So here's my comments on his editorial:

Exactly which "progressive" democratic record of Lieberman's is he talking about? Would it be sponsoring bills to protect Dow and Dupont from being sued over defective medical (mainly breasts) implants? Would it be pushing for similar laws to protect tobacco companies, HMOs and pharmaceutical companies from all lawsuits? No politician in Washington gets as much money from the insurance industry as Lieberman. And he's married to a drug company lobbyist.

What about the time he supported a bill that would deny funds to schools that counseled suicidal homosexual teens with the idea that there is nothing wrong with being gay? Is that considered "progressive?"

Would "progressive" be his attempts to force censorship on the music and film industries? Remember that he was also one of those politicians who tried to blame Marilyn Manson for Columbine.

Was his support for the idiotic Clinton impeachment "progressive?"

Oh wait, maybe he was talking about Joe's support of school vouchers (which would destroy public schools) or his anti-affirmative action stance.

Or maybe he's talking about the "progressive" idea of death penalty for minors, which Lieberman supports.

This article by one of Lieberman's political hacks is utter bullshit. He pulls a few quotes off the Internet and concludes that the anger against Joe is somehow based in anti-Semitism. By the way, all of his quotes that he purports to be "what the liberal blogs are saying" do not come from those actual blog postings but from the comments section that anyone can put something on. These are not "bloggers," they are just some blog readers who took a minute to hit the "comment" button and leave a remark, and they could be anyone from members of the GOP to the KKK to Lieberman's own staffers planting stuff. And to take Ned Lamont to task for not "denouncing" these statements is like condemning him for not denouncing a letter to the editor in the Jackson Hole Wyoming newspaper. He likely has never even seen or heard about these comments.

So because a few random nut-balls say some stupid things about old Joe being a Jew, suddenly it's all anti-Semites and McCarthy-ites that are trying to bring him down. Well that's complete bullshit, through and through. There is real anti-Semitism in the world, and this ass-hole trivializes it by trying to claim that Lieberman is a victim of it. It is an insult to every victim of the Holocaust, and every synagogue and Jewish cemetery that has ever had to clean off swastikas painted on their property. Mr. Davis should be ashamed of himself.

Those of us on the left who hate Joe Lieberman don't hate him because he's a Jew. We hate him because he's a conservative jerk who is in the back pocket of the insurance companies and the chemical industry. He is a Republican in Democratic clothing, and any person who considers themselves liberal or progressive should be ashamed of themselves for supporting him. You might as well vote for Rick Santorum or Tom Delay.

As far as "hate and vitriol" coming from us? Well before he starts accusing others of spewing hatred like Ann Coulter, he should talk to his "longtime friend" Joe about how he once referred to his opponent's supporters as Jihadists.

For some better reading on the Lieberman/Lamont race go to this and this. And these are free, unlike the Wall Street Journal site.

Love Letter To Lynne From Lowell

So after my last post I got a snippy little comment from Lynne, who has a blog called Left In Lowell, because she's a lefty politically and lives in Lowell, MA. This is her comment to me:

If you dislike your former place of residence so much, get yourself off of Leftyblogs' MA feed, then, as you are no longer a MA resident.

Thanks.

Sorry for the tone but if you think so poorly of the city, then you must think poorly of the people you left behind. It's sorta insulting.

Well Lynne, it certainly wasn't meant to be sorta insulting, it was meant to be really insulting. I must be off my game. What I don't get is that Lynne has read my blog a bunch of times and commented on several occasions, and has always posted a nice comment agreeing with what I wrote. So how is it that she has never been insulted by my degrading of Beantown before this? I mean, this was one of my tamer tirades against Boston. There have been people suggest to me that my blog should be called "I hate Boston" because of how much I go off on that town, has Lynne really missed it all this time? Why would she be so mad about my last one but not this three part series (here, here, and here) or this, this, or this. In that last one I ended it by writing, "This is what happens when you have a town full of those Southie dunderheads. They may have made for cute little lovable characters in Good Will Hunting, but in real life they're just a bunch of fucking Neanderthal dumbshits." How do you not get upset over that but over a little random bit about how I'm so much happier living in New York over Boston?

And there I think I just answered my own question. Boston knows they are not nearly as cool as New York and they have a lot of inferiority about it. I think it is probably the root of all of Boston's problems. Shit Lynne, I once wrote a whole tirade about how New England liberals (which is what you consider yourself) are the biggest hypocrites in the world, and not a peep from you about it. But one off the cuff remark about how it is so nice that stuff in New York stays open later than in Boston and suddenly I'm an ass-hole. (And really, if you ask anyone who knows me, I've been an ass-hole for so very much longer)

And as for the line, "...if you think so poorly of the city, then you must think poorly of the people you left behind."

Well, duh. That has been my point the whole time. I think I've made the point over and over that the reason Boston sucks the big one so much is because of the people. It is a town full of awful human beings who are shitty to everyone. What makes it even more unbearable isn't just that they're shitty all the time, but that they are so fucking proud of it. People in Boston don't bump you on the sidewalk and almost knock you down because they aren't watching where they are going, they do it because they want to knock you down.

Finally, as far as the Leftyblog Mass. "feed" that I'm on, well I have no idea how I got on there to begin with and don't even know how to take myself off. (And I've been listed there for a long time, I've always been surprised that I never got a pissed off Bostonian comment before since I'm pretty damn ruthless in my hatred for that town.) Someone at some point saw my blog and put my link up on their without my knowledge. I never really called my blog a political blog to begin with. Yes, I'm a person with leftist political leanings and often write about that, but I've always considered it to be more than just a political blog. I only found out about my listing at Leftyblog after discovering that people were coming to me from that site. I'm not complaining, mind you. A link is a link, and if more people find my blog because of it, that's cool. I wouldn't care if there was a link from the American Nazi Party site or NAMBLA if it means more people are reading my rants. But if I'm listed on the Mass. Leftyblog site, that is neither my fucking problem nor responsibility. And it seems like a really dumb, petty, shallow thing to be concerned about.

As a Massachusetts resident, you should be much more concerned about the fact that the people around you can't pronounce the words idea (ideer), car (cah), or park (pahk) without sounding like a bunch of goddamn morons.

Whew!

It's over! At long last I no longer live in the horrible, horrible shithole known as "Beantown." I got to finally change my profile location to New York baby!

It's going to still be a few days more before I get back to regular posting, so hang in there a little longer my adoring fans. My life right now is about getting our apartment in order. Our MUCH BIGGER apartment that is. (Seriously, we are the only people I know who moved to New York and got a bigger place than where we moved from) My days right now are being spent unpacking, painting walls, taking thousands of boxes and crumpled newspaper to the basement for recycling, and spending hours upon hours in Home Depot, Container Store, Crate & Barrel, Room & Board, Pottery Barn and Ethan Allen. Surprisingly, no Bed Bath and Beyond yet.

I'll write more later this week about my love of being in New York and out of Boston, but here's just one example:

We've been putting in late nights working on the apartment, so often we're not getting dinner until after 8:00 or 9:00 on a lot of nights. Last night we went to order a pizza at the great John's Pizzeria (right around the corner from us!) and grab some groceries from the Food Emporium. At both places my wife wondered out loud if they would still be open (it was pushing 10:00). And I said, "Honey, this isn't Boston, this is a real city. Shit stays open late in real cities."

It is so great not to be in Puritan-land anymore.

I Won't Let The Door Hit Me In The Ass On The Way Out

Sorry I've been gone so long everyone, I've been touring Chicago meeting some of my adoring fans (seriously) and my favorite DJ from when I lived in Chicago and listened to WXRT constantly. Met him at a random party, very cool guy. But that's a story for another day, this is not a real post. This is just a quick note to say that I'm about to box up the computer for the move. The next time you hear from me it will be from our new apartment in the great city of New York. I was going to change my location in my blog profile just because I'm so excited it won't say Boston anymore, but I'll wait until it's official.

Hang in a little longer everybody, I'll be back to my regular ranting soon. See you in the big city.

Free At Last! Free At Last!

It is finally here. My sentence of living in Boston for almost three years is effectively ending tomorrow. We're not moving quite yet, but my wife and I will be going to Chicago for the next couple of weeks and moving to New York right after we return. I've been waiting for this joyous day for so long. I'm giddy with excitement.

Since I will be out of town and staying at the mother-in-law's, where there is no computer, I will probably not be posting anything here for the next couple of weeks. Maybe I'll get a chance or two, but I doubt it. So I'll leave you now with just a few random thoughts I've had lately, some of them are just plain wrong (what else is new), and I'll hopefully be back in full swing once the move is finally over.
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So there was some roundtable thing in Washington last week with some of the cast members of "24" and Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security who apparently has nothing better to do with his time, and a few other conservative types, including Rush Limbaugh, sponsored by the Heritage Foundation. The topic? How the TV show is nothing like real life in the fight against terrorism. Just in case you didn't already know what an asinine and worthless organization the Heritage Foundation is, this is all the proof you need. Gee, you mean a TV drama about a fictional government anti-terrorism agency where about a gazillion things develop in one single day isn't anything like real life? Boy, they've got some on the ball genius Senior Fellows over there at that conservative think-tank. Good thing they were around to tell the people the difference between art and life. I always assumed that most conservatives were stupid, and apparently so does the Heritage Foundation. I do have something in common with them!

I could go on and on about the idiots over there, but I won't. What really stood out from this little dumbfest is that at some point, I think at the end, Rush Limbaugh planted a big sloppy kiss on the woman who plays Chloe on the show. There is speculation that they are dating. I don't know or really care if they are, it could be just that she is a big fan (barf), or that he just did it without warning and it was basically sexual harassment (seems likely). But if they are, here is the thing that I don't get. Her last boyfriend was the great talented genius comedian/actor David Cross. It is beyond the realm of imagination that someone could go from him to a fat, loudmouth, bloviating, sexist, racist fuckwad. David Cross and Rush aren't even in the same gene pool, how could they possibly be in the same dating pool? It boggles the mind.
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Newest thing to make me feel old: I got an email from the alumni association of my college. It was signed by the Director of Alumni Programs. She graduated four years after me, and she's like the head of the whole alumni thing. Geez, I don't even think I'm old enough to do alumni crap, and someone the same age as my younger sister is in charge of it. I need a cocktail.
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I just saw on-line that the kid who died on the ride at Disney World had a heart defect, just as my doctor wife predicted they would find. I think it's a cover-up myself. The ride in question involves really loud Aerosmith music. That has to be what really killed him. I know it would kill me to be strapped into a seat and forced to listen to that shit.
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And since she seems to have gotten herself into the news again recently, let me just reiterate my feelings about Star Jones. She is one of the biggest fucking wastes of oxygen this side of George W. Bush. And she's huge bigot who I hope someday gets beaten to death by a gay gang.

If you disagree and think she is someone who adds some value to the world, well, then you are a big fucking moron who needs to get a life.

Although one great thing to come out of the news about her the last couple of days is Keith Olberman showing a clip of her getting smacked in the face by a football over and over again. That shit is just funny.

Have a great couple of weeks everybody!

I'll be writing to you next from either Chicago or New York.

Well Excuuuuuuse Me!

I haven't posted anything this last week because my whole life has been about packing. Pack, buy boxes, pack more, buy more boxes, pack more again, buy more boxes, buy yet another roll of tape. I did get one of those awesome packing tape dispensers like I used to get to use back in my warehouse worker days after high school. I have very few man-toys, so it's good to add to the collection and show my wife that maybe I do have some testosterone. Oh, and bubble wrap. Rolls and rolls of bubble wrap. There's nothing like moving to make me feel nothing like the environmental-friendly person I like to think I usually am. Hundreds of feet of plastic just doesn't feel right.

But we are so close to getting out of this godforsaken shithole of a town that I can taste it. And unlike any other time in my life I have moved, I'm not getting one bit of nostalgia for anything I would miss when I leave. In fact, I've just been having moments of "Fuck, I'm so happy we're leaving soon."

Like going to Staples the other day to get a few more boxes and a huge roll of bubble wrap. I'm walking home with a 110 foot roll of wrap and a strapped together bundle of three boxes. Now these are not heavy of course, but they are extremely awkward. This is made even more so by the fact that it's really windy. So I'm trying to carry these things home while the wind is whipping them around as I walk. With flat boxes in windy weather you might as well be trying to carry a sail.

Now, usually when walking around Boston people are pretty much huge ass holes and don't make room for other people on the sidewalk. An example of this is when you are walking and there are two or more people coming from the other direction and they are spread across the whole sidewalk. In most places those people would move a little to make room for you to get by. Not in Boston. In fact, I've noticed that people sometimes even adjust the other way and purposely take up more space on the sidewalk, like a dog pissing on a post to claim the territory for themselves. Even people walking by themselves will do this. I can be walking and another person is coming from the other direction and I am to the far right side of the sidewalk and they will stay right in the middle and not even make an attempt to avoid bumping you.

"But surely this wouldn't happen when they see someone struggling to carry awkward bulky things down the sidewalk," I thought, "Even Bostonians can't be that big of ass holes."

Boy was I wrong. In my short ten minute walk home I was bumped no less than four times, twice what I would call pretty hard. And I was not walking on crowded sidewalks. Every single time I was as far over as I could get and the other person had plenty of room to get over to make enough space for me without putting themselves out in any way. But noooooooo, wouldn't want to give a fucking inch for a fellow human being would we?

Oh man, I need to get out of here. Basically just have one more week to get through. Then it's off to the nice friendly confines of Chicago for about two weeks, then back here to load the truck and we're off to New York.

And never look back.

Except maybe to flip the bird as we're leaving the city limits.

World Cup Fever

I get. I really finally get it.

Soccer that is. And for the rest of this blog I will refer to it by its more proper name of football (I would spell it futball but that's too overly pretentious even for me), because it is a lot more "foot" than our stupid American sport. When you think about it, American football should be called something like "passball" or "catchball" or "big-stupid-Neanderthal-fatass-ball."

My friend Joe wrote a good little piece about trying to watch the World Cup but just being bored by it. I can appreciate that notion about football, but I really disagree.

Back during the football Cup in 1998 my buddy Jose tried to get me to get into it. I admit I tried to watch the championship game between France and whoever, but ended up falling asleep in the middle of the match. Granted, this may have had something to do with the fact I was lying on my couch drinking beer and smoking "stuff" while trying to follow what the hell was going on.

So I didn't get it then. But a few years later, after I moved from Seattle to Chicago, my friend Amy took me to a football game at Soldier Field (before they re-did it to look like a toilet bowl) for the local team called the Fire. It was seeing it live that made me finally get into football. I don't know if it was the almost all-immigrant crowd singing that ole' ole' ole'-o song or what, but I just loved it. There is something both relaxing and exciting about football. There is a poetic flow to the whole thing that is just mesmerizing. I'm definitely a convert.

As for the whole "boring" charge, I just don't understand that. People in America say it's because of the low scoring and the ties (and I'll admit I still think of the Simpson's going to the game when I watch. Where Homer yells "boring" and Ken Brockman calling the game in the bored way as he says "holds it, holds it, holds it.."), but that's a crock.

First of all, the high scoring American sports are artificially that way. Regular football would be almost as high scoring as American football if they gave seven points for each goal too. And what the hell is with the field goal? That's exciting, watching a failed football (soccer) player kick a weird shaped ball through a couple of upright sticks? And what a pussy thing for a "manly" sport. "Awww, poor baby couldn't score the real way. Here, why don't you kick this though these poles and we'll give you...oh I don't know...three points. Just for getting kind of close."

Fuck that man. During the World Cup, if you don't score a goal...well then you don't fucking score. Nobody is there to make it easier for you.

And speaking of easier, how the hell does all the scoring in basketball make it more exciting? Doesn't seem to me that anybody has to work at it. Run down the court, dunk. Run to the other end, dunk. Repeat. About a hundred times. Yea, real fuckin' exciting.

You know why the scores are so low in football? Because it's fucking hard man! And I don't mean artificially hard like that stupid sport hockey. If you make the net that small and give the goalkeeper so much padding that he can cover the whole opening, then of course it's hard to get it through. Have you seen how big the net is in football? It's goddamn huge, and it still takes a lot of work to get it in.

Boring? I don't think so. Anybody who says it's boring didn't watch that amazing match between Germany and Poland the other day. A constant back and forth match with no goals scored after ninety minutes. In the last ten minutes the Polish goalkeeper repelled attack after attack in mind-blowing deflections and it appeared to be heading toward a tie. But then suddenly Germany got one through in extra time. It was a breathtaking 90 minutes.

And that's another thing, the clock seems to actually mean something in football. In American football a sixty minute game clock takes 3+ hours to click away. A ninety minute football game in the Cup takes less than two hours including halftime and adding on extra time for substitutions and injuries (but not because it's tied). The clock stops for nothing. I love that. And the constant action makes it a hell of a lot more exciting than American football's 30 seconds of playing followed by four minutes of players standing around with hand motions by refs and moving chains and bringing in the punting team and then calling a timeout and then reviewing a play on the TV, and then finally a commercial break.

No commercials during the matches may very well be the best thing about it.

And I know ties are one of the complaints as well. But I saw an over-matched Trinidad and Tobago team, in their first World Cup as well as the smallest country to ever make the tournament, play Sweden to a tie and you would have sworn they just won the whole thing, they were so ecstatic.

The excitement comes in the game itself, not just what the scoreboard says after it's over. I mean, if it's not fun to watch while it's happening, why would the final score matter anyway? An exciting tie game is a lot more fun to watch than a boring blowout with a winner at the end.

But I suppose that's not very American.

I've watched about half the matches so far this World Cup and I'm just loving it. I also see nothing but pure sportsmanship during the matches. Players get knocked down and the opposing guy helps him up with a smile and a pat on the head. Haven't seen a single fight yet. There has certainly been no equivalent of plunking a player in retaliation like there is in baseball. The crazy fans/hooligans may go at each other, but players during this tournament, from what I've seen, compete with class.

I still don't understand every little rule and nuance about the sport, but nothing beats the drama of the World Cup.

I should have listened to Jose years ago.

It is pure poetry in motion. I finally get it.

...And Rinse

I went to the dentist today. The last time I went was a year ago, which the dentist pointed out. She reminded me I should go every six months, but that she was happy to see I didn't go seven years between visits like last time. I certainly won't let that happen again since last time I had to get a procedure called scaling that involved them having to scrape my teeth under the gums, because of how heavy my plaque buildup was. Trust me, it's not something you want to have done if you can avoid it. It's nice to have health insurance now, so that doesn't happen anymore.

Since it had been a year since my last appointment I had to get x-rays as well as my cleaning. I realized something during the x-rays. It seems that when I get them done I hold my breath when they snap the shot. I'm not exactly sure what I think is going to happen, whether I'll get cancer or super powers (I would call myself Super Opinion Man if that did happen), but something about the fact that you have to wear a lead bib to get them done makes me think that I have to take every extra precaution.

So when the x-ray person puts the film in my mouth and steps behind the wall to shoot the picture, I hold my breath. I also sometimes wonder why they don't tell you to say "cheese."

Man, I'm a dork.

Fooey

I've always thought that the worst thing about Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994, besides poor Francis Bean losing the wrong parent, was the creation of the crappy band the Foo Fighters. How someone that came out of such a great band that made incredible music could go on to create such pedestrian pop shit is beyond me. But Dave Grohl has made the transition with ease. But I have discovered recently that the Foo Fighters music, as shitty as it is, it's not even the worst thing about the band.

I was reading this incredible Op-Ed in the New York Times the other day, on the 25th anniversary of the first published report of the disease that we now know as AIDS. It was titled Deadly Quackery, and it was about the co-called AIDS denialists and their affect on the policies and attitude toward the disease of the idiot president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki. Read the article, it is really good. One person that is mentioned in the piece is a woman named Christine Maggiore, an HIV-positive Californian. This is what they say about her:

By courting the AIDS denialists, Mbeki has increased their stature in the United States. He lent credibility to Christine Maggiore, a Californian who campaigns against using antiretrovirals to prevent transmission of HIV from mothers to children, when he was photographed meeting her. Two years later, Maggiore gave birth to an HIV-infected daughter, Eliza Jane, who acquired an AIDS-related infection last year and died at age 3.

I had never heard of this person so I googled her. She runs an organization called Alive & Well and I spent some time looking around their web site. It is absolutely horrifying to read the kind of misinformation she promotes. These groups of AIDS denialists make absolutely outrageous claims that fly in the face of all proven medical science. HIV doesn't cause AIDS, AIDS is not a real disease but a renaming of a group of 29 different diseases that have been around for a long time, HIV isn't transmitted by sex, AIDS is caused by malnutrition and also that it is caused by the drugs created to treat it. There is a popular opinion among these people that the best treatment for AIDS is multivitamins, dietary changes, homeopathy, cleansing and even some dipshit thing called "imagery."

Even worse, this woman has promoted the idea that pregnant women should not take antiretroviral drugs to prevent passing the virus to their babies, ignoring the fact that since this has become the standard treatment for expectant mothers the rate of babies born with the virus to HIV-positive mothers has plummeted. As mentioned in the NYT article, she practiced what she preached and her daughter died of AIDS. She continues to deny that it was AIDS that killed her kid.

Anyway, to get back to my point why the Foo Fighters suck even more than we thought before, you can read about this crazy woman on your own, I discovered something during my little exploration of her site. Besides support from the leader of South Africa, it seems that she has big fans in the Foos. If you go to the community/causes section of their official website they have a link to the Alive & Well website, with the description ‚"Alive & Well is a non-profit grassroots education, support, and research organization founded by a group of HIV positive diagnosed men and women who have learned to live in health without AIDS drugs and without fear of illness."

Sounds real nice if you don't know the truth behind this "research" organization.

The sad part is that this is listed with a bunch of great social and political causes like Campus Progress, Future Forest and Runoff Voting. They have put this lunatic fringe group side by side with genuine progressive organizations and given them an image of legitimacy.

This crazy woman, Christine Maggiore, should be in jail for killing her kid by not providing medical treatment. Instead, she's getting her picture taken with the president of South Africa and hanging out with Gen-X indie-poppers who promote her insanity.

And that's why it's dangerous what they are doing. The Foos have a lot of fans who weren't around in the beginning of the AIDS era and don't know what a difference the development of these drugs has made. Some newly diagnosed, young, scared, impressionable music fan could be steered to this questionable organization and get bombarded with a load of legitimate sounding misinformation and decide to not seek out real treatment for HIV/AIDS because of the Foo Fighters' promotion of this whacko group. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Making shitty music is forgivable, maybe. Spreading deadly propaganda is abhorrent.

T-Shirt Liberals And New England Hypocrisy

I sent this to the Boston Globe last week as an Op-Ed submission. They didn't run it. Oh well. I sent it to the Boston Herald earlier today, but I'm not going to wait to see if they print it because I probably have a higher readership than they do anyway. Seriously, they give it away outside the train station because nobody will pay to read it. That's what happens when you are the uglier step-sister to the New York Post I guess.

Thanks to Joe for editing advice.
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T-Shirt Liberals. Bumper Sticker Liberals. Limousine Liberals. Checkbook Liberals. They go by many names, and they are everywhere, though not nearly as pervasive in other parts of the country as they are in New England. While living in other regions of the country I was confused by conservatives who derided the "New England liberal elite." I've always been a proud liberal and I couldn't understand how the charge of elitism applied to believing in protecting the environment, workers rights, racial and gender equality, and freedom of speech, among other things. It took me moving to Boston almost three years ago to understand not only why the charge of liberal elitism is so often made, but also so easy for people to believe.

One needs to look no farther than environmental issues for the evidence. The progressives in this region talk a good talk about energy conservation, alternative sources of energy, recycling and mass transportation. These are all great ideas to care about. But the problem with New England liberals is that they treat them all like they are abstract ideas and not an action you actually take to make a difference. Walking all over Boston I often see those pro-environment license plates that generate money for the Environmental Trust, slapped on to the back of 12 miles-per-gallon SUVs. This is a classic bumper sticker liberal move. Put a nice little message on your car that supports the environment, maybe even in the form of something that says you give a little money (in this case about $40 per year) to environmental organizations and then happily drive your fossil fuel-burning behemoth to the symphony guilt-free. Forgive me if I don't applaud their gift to Mother Nature. I think that walking and taking public transportation to get where you need to go does a lot more for the environment than someone slapping a pro-nature message on their car, even if it does send a few dollars to an environmental trust.

Just look at my neighborhood of Beacon Hill. It is a place where a lot of the rich, left-leaning residents had Kerry/Edwards signs in their windows and they are very proud of getting their picture taken for the society pages at events to raise money for environmental causes, among other things. Yet in a neighborhood that is the most perfectly located in the city for using your feet and the subway to get around, the hill is bursting at the seams with fossil-fuel burning vehicles, with a perversely high percentage of them being SUVs and other gas wasting luxury cars. And one only needs to walk around Beacon Hill on a Friday morning to see just how woefully low the number of residents who participate in the city's recycling program is.

Nothing has put the national spotlight on liberal elitism and New England hypocrisy like the Cape Wind project. A lot of otherwise liberal Cape Cod residents have come out fighting against the clean energy project. We're not talking about the usual suspects - conservative hacks backed by the oil and coal industry - but self-described liberals. Their argument usually begins with something like "We agree that we need alternative and renewable energy, but..." followed by a list of reasons as weak as George Bush's for attacking Iraq. It really comes down to a simple case of "not in my back yard."

Even the "liberal lion" Ted Kennedy has come out against the wind farm for no other reason than it might be visible from his family's compound in Hyannis. The senior senator from Massachusetts talks a good game about the need for conservation and renewable sources of energy, but gets around by SUV and private jets instead of public transportation, Amtrak or commercial flights. And even more disheartening, he makes backroom deals with an Alaskan wildlife oil-drilling advocate to get the Cape project killed. One can guess the price to be paid Sen. Stevens of Alaska for his help in protecting Sen. Kennedy's view. Robert Kennedy Jr., a prominent environmentalist, has also come out against Cape Wind, in complete contrast to the rest of the environmental community.

This is why the left is painted in such a bad light. We tell everyone to conserve and argue the need for better energy sources, then jump in our SUVs and fight against a clean energy project because it might be (barely) visible from our backyard. This is not leadership. Until we are willing to make those sacrifices ourselves - using public transportation even if it takes a little longer, recycling, promoting not just the idea of clean energy but also the reality - then we can't expect the rest of the world to take us seriously.

"Save the earth" should not just be catchy t-shirt slogan. All the bumper stickers in the world and big checks written to out to Greenpeace won't make a bit of difference if we just expect everyone else to bear the burden.

The Old Apartment - Part 2

So letting the broker show our apartment even though he didn't give enough notice turned out to be a good idea. The guy he showed it to (the one who said he had no intention of talking to the neighbors) told him that he wanted to take the place. As they left and I heard them talk about going back to the office to do the paperwork. Awesome, I thought, it was over and we wouldn't have to worry about having a parade of people coming through the place every day. The cockatiel isn't too fond of strangers (which still includes me really) so he would be happier this way too. The guy actually first stated out loud he wanted the place about three seconds after he stepped in the door (seriously, that's not an exaggeration). It probably has something to do with the fact that in our neighborhood, our roughly 400 square foot apartment is considered "big," something the broker even said while he was there. "This is one of the biggest apartments available on Beacon Hill," he said.

In case you needed any more evidence of how tight the Boston housing market is, this was it. Our apartment was on the market for less than a half of a day, about 7 hours.

I told the wife when she got home, after admitting that she was right and I was wrong about how soon brokers would start calling and that they would want to come over right away. Her annoyance with me for letting someone come to look at the apartment when it was, in her mind, messy was offset by her happiness that it was over and we didn't have to deal with it anymore.

The next morning my honey was still getting ready for work when the phone rang.

"Hi this is Marc from Red Brick Real Estate. I want to show your apartment today at 10:00."

I looked at the clock, it was 9:50.

I explained to him that it wasn't a good time and that we wanted 24 hours notice on any apartment showings. I figured the place would still be listed until the credit check and all that crap went through with the guy who wanted it, but I still wasn't going to let these brokers (did I mention before I think of brokers as scum sucking maggots?) push me around.

"24 hours notice?!?! John (our landlord) didn't tell me that," he replied.
"Ok," I said, "I don't know what it is about you New Englanders, I'm not from here, but where I come from (I think I made myself sick that this phrase actually left my mouth) people don't do this. Common courtesy says you can't expect to come over to my apartment in ten minutes."

He made some indignant grunting noises (I can't think of a good way to convey the sound, I spent the last twenty minutes trying to think of a way to spell them, with no luck), kind of like a child who isn't allowed to have a cookie.

He then said, "Then I want to show the place tomorrow at 10:00."
"That's no good." I said, "Nobody is going to be here tomorrow at that time. But I'll be here after 3:00."
"You mean you need to be there, too?"
"Yes."

I pretty much decided by this asshole's attitude that no way would I let him in my apartment without me there. I figure, act like a baby, get treated like a baby. I told him that the concern was the bird, who is not locked in a cage and is allowed free range of the apartment (hey, it's his place too).

He made some more of those grunting noises and then, "I'll call you back." Click.

He called back a few minutes later and said he wanted to show the place on Saturday (this was Thursday) at 10:00. This guy had a thing about 10:00 that I couldn't understand. I know that real estate brokers don't actually do any work for the obscene amount of money they make, but shit, he only works what, from 10:00 to 10:15?

I told him that was fine and then he said, "It probably won't matter because the place will probably be taken by then."
"That's probably true," I said, "the guy who looked at it yesterday said he was going to take the place."
"It's going to cost me a commission." (Presumably he meant my not letting him show the place in ten minutes was the cause)
"Well you know what? Your commission is not my problem."
"You see, the way it works on Beacon Hill is that people stop by the office and want to look at places and we just swing by and show them."
"Well how it 'works' on Beacon Hill is also not my problem. This is my apartment until the end of July and I make the rules. My rights, by law (more proof brokers are useless, they are supposed to be the ones that know rental law) are that you have to give me 24-48 hours notice if you want to show my place."

I wanted to add the words, "you stupid asshole" at the end of the last sentence but I kept it at a mature level. I'm sure that comes as a surprise to everyone.

The thing that bugs me about twats like this guy is that he depends on people not knowing their rights and he tries his best to bully them. Well fuck that, I don't let people walk on me. This attitude is probably even more pronounced since I got married. My wife was still drying her hair and in her underwear that morning. Now, people seeing my hot lady in her skivvies and seeing how lucky I am doesn't really bother me, but she's not really into that. So I wasn't going to let her get rushed or pressured in her own home. There is some sort of weird primal male thing that I always thought was bullshit, but there might actually be something to it. Whenever anyone does anything to fuck with my wife I want to take a baseball bat to their heads. And that's on top of the fact that I already hate dickheads like this guy.

Anyway, my landlord called the guy just a couple of hours later to tell him the place had been taken.

The prick never called back to thank me for saving him from wasting his time showing the place.

The Old Apartment - Part 1

The landlord left a message on Monday night last week. We were home when he called, but it was the same time as the 24 season finale and no way in hell was I going to answer the phone during those two hours. I called him back late the next day and he just wanted to ask what was up with us because our lease is ending in July and he couldn't remember why we had changed the ending date. Despite a degree from MIT and a fortune made in the antique business, he doesn't come across as the brightest bulb in the box sometimes. Anyway, I reminded him that yes, we were planning on moving out of the apartment and out of Boston (Woo-Hoo!) to relocate to New York (double Woo-Hoo!). He asked if he could go ahead and list the apartment with the brokers he uses and I said no problem. My wife differed with the "no problem" opinion. She was freaked because the place wasn't clean. First of all, it looked fine. Second of all, I still can't figure out why she would care what the place looks like to people who might be moving in after we are gone. I mean, people are coming to look at our apartment, we're not holding interviews for new friends. I guess it's a girl thing. She told me I should have told him to wait to list it so we would have more time to clean up and blah blah blah and she wasn't ready to have people start showing up to look at the place already. I told her not to worry about it so much. It wasn't even June yet, I told her, so no way would people be looking for August 1st already, and anyway they have to give us 24-hour notice to come show the place. She pretty much just gave me the old "you just wait and see" look.

Boy was I eating crow the next day. I got home form work at about 3:30 and there were three messages on the machine from different brokers (or as I like to call them, scum sucking leaches) wanting to come over and show the place. And every call, without exception, had them asking to show the place at a time that was about 10 or 15 minutes after their phone call. I was about to start calling them back to explain the 24-hour notice rule when another one called, "Hi this is (so and so) from Crescent Realty and I have a guy in my office and want to swing by to show him your apartment."

Holy shit I couldn't believe these damn people. I explained to him that I wouldn't be letting people show the place with any less than a 24-hour notice, and something completely unexpected of a Bostonian happened. He apologized. No trying to talk me into it or giving me a hard time, he just apologized and tried to figure out when he could show the place. I ended up telling him to go ahead and bring the guy over (the wife wasn't home to freak about how the place looked) since he had somebody there, but that from now on I would be sticking to my "guns," as it were. He turned out to be this really sweet old guy and when he showed up he apologized again and thanked me many times for letting him show the place and was all around really nice about it.

So the guy looking at the place is the real point of this story. I was telling him about the place - the crappy laundry machines, the loud neighbors, the water damage in the ceiling/wall over the fridge, but great water pressure and hardwood floors and decorative fireplaces - and he said the heartiest thing.

There is a single-level coach house connected to the back of our building and our back window (we're on the first floor) looks directly out onto their little patio, and it is a married couple that lives there. Anyway, I was kind of telling him a little bit about them since you can't help but see them a lot if you want to have your window open. I mentioned that the wife will talk to you but the husband comes across as really antisocial. This is what he said:

"That's OK, I don't plan on talking to the neighbors anyway."

That, in a nutshell, represents exactly why I hate living in Boston. This town is full of that attitude. No desire to know your neighbors. It's not even that people here are shy, which I secretly always hoped that's what it was really all about. It is actually a conscious decision to not be friendly. Man, I am so happy we're finally leaving.

Six weeks to go, six weeks to go....

Race Baiting

I have heard lots of defensive posturing from those on the anti-immigration side of the current debate that they are not racists. Well, I just call bullshit on that. And it takes no more than a few minutes of on-line searching to find a lot of examples of the thinly-veiled racism that is the backbone of this anti-"illegals" movement. Our friends at Media Matters are a great resource for this stuff.

A lot of the leaders of this racist agenda driven movement make a lot of claims like "protecting American jobs" or "preventing terrorists from getting in" (and they need to constantly be reminded that that's not how the terrorists get in), but they don't take too long to show their true colors. Check out this woman from something called Mothers Against Illegal Aliens. And this link to their mission statement, it's priceless. My favorite line is "Our beautiful Nation has been turned into a jungle by the mass invasion of illegal aliens." Yeah, it's a real "jungle" out there.

Then there's this guy named Joseph Turner in San Bernardino, CA that has drawn up an anti-immigration initiative and gotten enough signatures to get it on the ballot. It would, among other things, lay out penalties for landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, ban city-financed day-laborer centers, and require that all city business be conducted only in English. During the hearing at the city council over the measure (the council voted it down, so by law in San Bernardino it has to go to the voters since Turner got enough signatures), this moron said that illegal aliens were turning America's cities into "third-world cesspools" and that Americans are "sick of pressing one for English." Yea dude, I'm so fucking put-out by having to press a number on my phone when I call to check my bank balance. Those precious extra nano-seconds that I'm forced to spend away from my family are ruining my life. And I think the "cesspool" statement speaks for itself. This guy should come visit Boston. It's the Southies (South Boston people, like in Good Will Hunting, for you non-New Englanders), not the Mexicans, that make this a shitty place.

You've got to see his Save Our State site. It is hilarious and creepy all at the same time. And this Nazi fucker's claim that he's not a racist goes out the window with a section called the "Gallery Of Goons" that includes this Photoshopped picture of Hispanic protestors. OK, so maybe my previous "thinly-veiled" comment was a little off. This isn't even close to subtle.

And of course no right-wing racist agenda would be complete without support from FOX. John Gibson tells his viewers (he presumes they are all white, which is probably true) to "make more babies" because if we don't the Hispanics will be in the majority in 25 years. Oh the horror!

Aunt Tom

Mary Cheney needs to be bitch-slapped. What the hell is wrong with this woman? She's out there on her book tour, a tome she calls Now It's My Turn, speaking out against Bush's idea for a constitutional amendment banning all gay marriage. She, as we all know, didn't say one word about it during the 2004 campaign when Dubya made it a big issue to get all the right-wing bigots to the polls. In fact, she was a member of the reelection campaign. Her reasoning is that, even though the Texas dipshit was trying to outlaw what she is, he was the strongest on national security.

Great thinking Mary! Not only vote for, but work for the reelection of a man who thinks you are a degenerate who is going to go to hell and that you are threat to the American way of life and wants to put anti-you laws into the Constitution, all because you like his views on national defense. But in her book she refers to Kerry and Edwards and as "a son of a bitch" and "slime" respectively for just mentioning that she is a lesbian when talking about supporting gay rights and accuses them of using her sexuality as a campaign issue. This girl is seriously more mental than even her father.

Who else would do this besides a typical self-loathing gay Republican? Can you even imagine this happening with any other minority? Do you think there were any black men sitting around supporting members of the KKK in national elections using the same kind of logic?

Seriously, imagine a black person saying, "Let's see, I'm not a big fan of his anti-interracial marriage and pro-lynching positions, but I like his ideas about the economy and education, so David Duke is the right man for our country."

That's the logic of Mary Cheney. She makes me sick.

Newtie!

I like to stay up late at night, much to my wife's chagrin sometimes. She likes it when we go to bed together, but I really like staying up and channel surfing or reading (OK, mostly channel surfing, but sometimes I'm actually catching up on New Yorker articles). My wife has actually wondered out loud what I could possibly be doing at that time of night, and I wish it was that I had some secret life like sneaking out and fighting crime with a secret identity under the dark of night or passing out coats and sandwiches to the homeless. But no, it's mostly that some of my extreme dweeby tendencies are best practiced out of sight of my lovely wife lest she figure out how big of a nerd I really am. I'm talking, of course, about watching C-Span.

I truly do think that C-Span is the single greatest thing about Cable TV, barely edging out VH1's Behind The Music and the ability to see an episode of Law & Order at any given time of the day. I tend to watch it a lot at night after my better half has gone to bed. It's better at this time because they show speeches given by people earlier in the day or week or interesting interviews with authors/politicians/commentators/documentary filmmakers/etc, rather than during the day when it is mostly boring speeches from politicians to a mostly empty House or Senate chamber (seriously, do any of our elected officials even go to work except during the State Of the Union address?).

Anyway, the other night I flipped it over to C-Span after watching the midnight airing of Countdown with Keith Olberman - I just love his comedic commentary on the news and his never-ending bashing of O'Reilly and FOX - and they were airing, one right after the other, John McCain's kissing-the-ass-of-Falwell commencement address at Rightwingfreakazoid University and Newt Gingrich's speech to the Iowa Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner. Seeing the fat bastard giving a speech at a political event made me time warp back to 1995, which on one hand would be cool because it would mean I was 25, but on the other hand it would mean I'd still be working as a pizza cook, and that was a shitty job. The dinner was held on April 29th, which doesn't seem to hold any significance whatsoever in the life of Lincoln. It is more than a month and a half after his birthday and it is nowhere near the dates of the Gettysburg Address or the Emancipation Proclamation. The closest thing in the Lincoln bio to the date of this event is his assassination (April 14th), which seems an odd (not to mention macabre) choice for celebrating. But nobody claimed that Iowans were smart people, except for the ones that were smart enough to escape that horrible place. Lucky me, my mother is trying to get me to attend the upcoming family reunion there in July. I should start practicing my stupid now. But I digress...

I flipped it to C-Span after the McCain speech, that got a lot of media coverage anyway, was over and it was toward the end of the Newt Gingrich talk. Later I learned he was introduced by the Neanderthal twit Sean Hannity. I've watched a lot of the parts that I missed online, but I'll just briefly tell you about a couple of the things he said just toward the end that I saw that night. One was this idea he has to create a Travelocity-like website for prescription drugs that would "reduce the price of drugs in the United States by 40%" and then made a joke about how Canadians would be coming to the U.S. for medication, which got a nice little chuckle out of the Iowa blue hairs. I just love how the idiot thinks that putting stuff on computers just magically lowers the price. The internets is magic!

He also spoke about one of his requirements of citizenship for immigrants to pass a test about the history of our country. I think if he was really worried about the well being of this land he would spend his energy trying to make sure that high school graduates knew more about the Constitution than they do the American Idol contestants. Pssst, hey Newt, guess what? Immigrants already have to take a test on American history and government that most Americans couldn't pass. So you're not exactly throwing out any revolutionary ideas there.

He ended his talk to the Iowa Republicans by touching on the glorious fight against terrorism. One thing he did that I found interesting and honest in a horrifying way was admit that this war could go on for 50 or 70 years. Oh happy days are here again, eh Newt? By the way is it just me or does everyone else also think of Monty Python every time they hear his name? (You know the one - "She turned me into a newt!" "A newt?" "Well I got better.") But he used this moment, in the usual conservative bullshit way, to do some liberal bashing. Here is how he finished up his speech:

We are faced with enemies in the irreconcilable wing of Islam who want to destroy us. And they're irreconcilable for a simple reason. If they were to win - if we sat down and said "let's have detente," to use a term out of the cold war - their first requirement would be that all the women in this room leave. Go look at how the Taliban ran Afghanistan, go look at how the Saudis run Saudi Arabia. So my first question for all of you - and I love doing this with liberal women reporters, we'll be in the middle of a discussion and I'll say "do you like your job?" and they'll go "yeah," and I'll say "well do you want to keep it," and they'll say "yeah," and I'll say "well then you better hope we win," and they go ""what are you talking about?" I did this one day with a BBC reporter. It was summertime and she was in a short sleeve dress and I said "do you think anybody in the other team is going to let you stay on television?" She was just stunned, 'cause she was sitting there going "I can't be on your side, your the real enemy. What do you mean their the real enemy more than your the real enemy? Now I have two real enemies?" As you could see, she was in total confusion.

Ah yes, yet another silly "strawman" argument from the conservatives. They can't actually knock down the real things liberals say or believe in so they make up fake "liberal" arguments that they can easily knock down. I don't buy for a minute that this conversation has ever taken place with any reporter, liberal or otherwise. I love how he tries to make the claim that the left is completely clueless about how Islamic countries treat their women, like the conservatives have been out there fighting for them all these years. Right pal, whatever. Human rights groups were ignored for years while women were being oppressed beyond belief and Newt and his cronies gave the Taliban free money. And people like Gingrich have helped keep the House of Saud in power for years. That he even pretends to give a shit about the plight of women in the Middle east is beyond laughable, it's just plain disgusting. And the claim that Newt is out there educating the "liberal press" about the horrors of the Taliban and Saudi regimes, how ridiculous can you get? And then there is the whole black and white way of looking at the world, the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," or "with us or against us" routine. I got news for ya Newtie, hating you and Osama Bin Laden at the same time and wishing you both would die is not a hard thing to comprehend. Hating both Hitler and Stalin even though they were fighting against each other wasn't so hard, it shouldn't be a stretch to wish horrible pain on both Kim Jong Il and Dubya at the same time.

Bombing the hell out of the Middle East or letting radical Islamists take over our country aren't the only two options you fat-ass moron.

He also refered to the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the "dictator of Iran," despite the fact that the president of Iran is a largely ceremonial office and the real "dictator" is the Supreme Leader Seyyad Ali Hossayni Khamenei and the rest of the power lies with the Gaurdian Council made up of leading clerics. Calling Ahmadinejad a dictator is a lot like claiming Miss America rules the U.S. with an iron fist.

He finished up by talking about how winning the cold war was different because they were atheist and "You're never a suicide bomber if you're an atheist because there's nowhere to go," which got another nice chuckle from the upstanding, corn-fed Iowan Christians. Easy crowd.

So why am I telling you all of this? For those of you who don't watch C-Span at one in the morning, you should be warned. This guy was in Iowa remember. And he was there just a few days before that, and he'll be there again in a couple of weeks for an event. I'm sure he also has some New Hampshire events on his schedule. And South Carolina and Ohio and Michigan. Newt is trying to make a comeback and take out another contract on America, this time shooting for the top prize. He's running for President, and we need to warn everyone. Right now he's quietly making the rounds in the small GOP gatherings making his little jokes and making himself out to be some sort of humble, wise, old outsider with fresh ideas and a new direction for our country (gives me a gag reflex just to think about it). Pretty soon though, we'll be seeing him all over the place telling us about American values (the replacement phrase for "family values" from the 80s/90s) and how we should live our lives. Just in case anyone forgot, here is the Cliff's Notes version of Newt's "values:

Adultery (for him at least) = Good
Two men in a long term committed, monogamous relationship for over twenty years = Evil
Democrat draft-dodgers = Evil
Republican draft-dodgers = Good
Democrat president getting blowjob from staffer = Evil
Republican Speaker of the House getting blowjob from staffer = Good, very good
Poor citizens bouncing bad checks = Evil
Congressmen bouncing bad checks, with overdraft fees paid by taxpayers = Good

And of course, his best "family value" is:

Serving your wife (who you've been cheating on) with divorce papers as she lies in a hospital bed recovering from cancer treatment = Priceless

Warn everyone you know. Newt is back. And he's fatter and dumber than ever.

God, I need to stop watching C-Span.

Asshole

This is my new favorite find on the web. This is what will come up if you type Asshole into the Google search box and click "I'm feeling lucky."

Send the link to all your friends and enemies.

They should book this band for next year's Washington Correspondents Dinner....

Best. Performance. Ever.

There has been a lot of talk about whether or not the Stephen Colbert performance at the White House Correspondents dinner was funny. I really just have this to say. If you don't get irony or sarcasm and didn't think he was funny and, even worse, think the Bush "self deprecating" skit with his look-alike was better, well I'm sorry for you. I'm sure there is a collection of Horatio Sanz SNL skits you could be renting or a Saved By The Bell marathon on TBS you could be watching.

As for the members of the press who have been bitching and moaning about what he did (Gasp! He was insulting to the media and politicians), who the hell did you think you were booking for this thing? Have you ever seen the Colbert Report? Get a grip. Your little dinner is a joke, and Colbert just pointed that out to you.

What you all should be worried about is that, in twenty minutes, he called the dumbass president out on his shit more than you guys have done in five years. That's what is not funny.

Lou Dobbs Must Die

Please! Someone put Lou Dobbs out of our misery. I am so sick of this bastard. I try to avoid watching him at all, but he shows up in other places sometime that I end up hearing his vile nonsense. The other day I was flipping the channels and he was being interviewed by Anderson Cooper (the media is so ridiculous these days that they think its legitimate to conduct "interviews" with hosts of other shows on the same network) and he made the comment that seeing flags from other countries involved in protest in the US make him "nauseous." Gee, exaggerate much Lou? What the hell about that would make someone nauseous? Why would anyone give two shits what kind of flag or banner someone was carrying at a rally or protest? This is only partially true anyway, as he has stated in the past that he doesn't like seeing foreign flags flown in this country at all, not just at protests (he must have hated the Salt Lake Olympics). And to claim that it actually makes you physically ill? Give me a fucking break. This is another one of those situations that Bill Maher refers to as people feigning outrage. Like the whole Dixie Chicks thing a couple of years ago. I don't buy that it really bothers him, he just likes the sound of his voice and the power that goes along with him stirring shit up for no reason. Lou then went on to state, for about the gazillionth time, that he doesn't like celebrating our differences (code for hating multi-culturalism) and wants us to only celebrate our "commonalities" as Americans.

He has said this over and over and I have never heard anyone actually follow-up with a question about what that really means. He's always crystal clear about what it doesn't mean, waving flags of other countries or celebrating any ethnic holidays such as Cinco de Mayo. He even said that we shouldn't celebrate St. Patrick's Day, because that's an Irish thing and people wave Irish flags during that time. Of course, he doesn't really have a problem with St. Paddy's Day, he just said that when he got backed into a corner when he was bitching to some Latino guest about the waving of Mexican flags and she commented that no one complains when we wave Irish flags during St. Patrick's parades. The only way he could save face and not look like the racist prick that he is was to say he didn't like people celebrating that either. That had to be the biggest line of bullshit I've ever heard, at least from someone outside the Bush administration. A problem with St. Patrick's Day?????? Is he serious? Could he possibly expect people to believe that he thinks St. Patrick's Day is bad for America, and that it's one of the things that "separates us" as a nation? Bad for livers maybe, but fuck Lou, you are a ridiculous man. Just admit you are a racist Nazi ass-hole and move on. But no, he must continue the mirage that he's a "populist" who cares about the American worker. He even defended himself once against the charge of hating Mexicans by saying that he loves Mexican food. Good one Lou, I'm sure they all bought it.

But back to our commonalities. What the hell does that mean on a practical level? So we know it means not waving the flags of any other country or celebrating any holiday that has anything to do with any heritage except America itself. OK, so nothing but the old stars and stripes and any event. But what about places like Puerto Rico and American Samoa? Are their flags OK? They are, after all, US territories. If those flags are not allowed, are you also against state flags? Will you be bitching the next time someone brings a Nevada state flag to a political rally? After all, that goes against the "commonality" Nevadans have with the rest of the country. How do you solve that problem? You can't ban the flags of Guam or the Virgin Islands (both US territories and therefore the people there are American citizens) if you allow any state flags. And while we are talking about the territories, what about the English-only rule that you are a big fan of? Should those places be subject to that rule, since they are part of America? Are you in favor of making the schools in those places teach classes only in English?

And holidays. So Lou, no Cinco de Mayo and no St. Patrick's Day. What holidays are OK to celebrate? I would assume that Christmas and Easter are out since those are Christian holidays and that would exclude Americans that are Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim or Atheist. Be careful how you answer this one, you fellow scumbag Bill O'Reilly will come after you for waging a "war on Christmas." So do we lose those days, along with Passover, Kwanzaa, Ramadan and L. Ron Hubbard Day? Or do we do a majority rule commonality and keep the Christian one's but lose the others? I'm sure the Jews wouldn't mind at all.

So what holidays would that leave us that celebrate our commonalities as Americans? I suppose Columbus Day. But isn't that too Italian to celebrated Lou? Personally, I would say that a holiday that celebrates someone who slaughtered and enslaved as many innocents as he did is not a great idea, but hey, if the Italian reason works for you it works for me. Veterans' Day, Memorial Day and any of the other ones that honor veterans (how many of these do we need anyway)? Those have to go, a small minority of Americans are veterans so they would be deemed too exclusionary. Labor Day? We can't make people like Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, and George W. Bush (people who have never labored a day in their life) feel left out so that one is out. I guess that leaves us with Independence Day. Although, very few families in this country can trace their roots all the way back to the founding of the Republic, so that would leave out the newer arrivals, so I guess the 4th would have to be cut as well.

I suppose all that we have left is Flag Day. And nothing says a rip-roaring good time like Flag Day. But that sure isn't very many days off from work every year. So how about a compromise Lou? What if we gave you Bloviating Jingoistic Fat-Ass White Male Bigot Day?

Could we have Cinco de Mayo back then?

Boston's Finest Escort Service

Not sure whether to file this item under "another thing I hate about Boston" or "another stupid thing about America," because this nonsense would probably have happened in other cities as well. I was watching the beginning of the Red Sox-Yankees game last night to see the response to Johnny Damon getting introduced for the first time in a Yankee uniform at Fenway Park (For those of you who don't follow baseball, Damon was probably the most popular of all the Red Sox players on the 2004 World Series team, but then signed with the much hated Yankees this last off-season). It was pretty much what one would expect from a bunch of sports fans, lots of signs around the park calling him "Johnny Demon" and booing him every time he ducked his head out of the dugout before the game. And his first at bat was a cavalcade of boos until he tipped his hat at the crowd and they seemed to instantly change to cheers. Sports fans are so easy to manipulate.

But this isn't what the thing that was so annoying on this day. Earlier in the day the team re-acquired backup catcher Doug Mirabelli in a trade with the San Diego Padres, they had traded him away in the off-season only to find out that their new backup catcher has a really hard time catching Tim Wakefield's knuckleball, which is what they use their backup for. And since this particular game had Wakefield as the starting pitcher they wanted to get him to Fenway as soon as possible. So a private jet flew him from California to Logan Airport in Boston, where a police SUV was waiting to whisk him to the ballpark. Really, I'm not kidding. A policeman, with Mirabelli's uniform waiting for him in the car, picked him up at the airport and raced to Fenway with sirens blaring. By Mirabelli's account the cop was going over 100 miles per hour. His plane landed at 6:48pm and the cop car arrived at Fenway at 7:00pm. Twelve minutes, including the time it took him to walk off the plane and get into the car and get out of the airport.

Can anyone say misuse of government services? Not a single Boston media outlet seems to have a problem with it. In fact, they seemed to love it. Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan even made a joke that being able to get him there that fast made the $15 billion spent on the Big Dig worth it. Of course, the fans loved it too, and gave him a standing ovation. And this is just another example of why I can't wait to get out of this town. Why does no one else see a problem with this? A police officer (on or off duty is unclear) uses a government vehicle to escort a private citizen to his private job just so he can get there in time. And puts the public at great risk by driving recklessly. All to get a jock to the park on time. Now, I love baseball, but this is utterly fucking ridiculous. I can't see how this is acceptable on any level. I can't support this any more than I could support it if it was to get Noam Chomsky to a lecture on time, and that would be a hell of a lot better reason than getting a weak-hitting (.182 average going into last night's game) backup catcher to the game on time.

The cop who participated in this should be fired. If there was a supervisor in the police department who approved this, he or she should also be fired. Red Sox owner John Henry, club CEO Larry Lucchino, and GM Theo Epstein should all be fined $1 million each. That they even thought this OK is astonishing. PEOPLE, IT'S A BASEBALL PLAYER! This was not bone marrow or a kidney bound for the Children's Hospital.

I don't know if this would only happen in Boston or not. But it's not surprising it did happen here and that everyone seems to be OK with it, what with the fact that most people around here drive like maniacs anyway and they treat the Red Sox like a religion. If you think Scientology is a stupid religion (and it is), you should see the idiocy of the one they call Red Sox Nation.

This is what happens when you have a town full of those Southie dunderheads. They may have made for cute little lovable characters in Good Will Hunting, but in real life they're just a bunch of fucking Neanderthal dumbshits.