Your Impending Renaissance

ParadigmsRegained

2009-12-09T21:38:00.000-08:00

OneForce is still knocked out. I can’t sleep. I have to keep going. My finger’s been on the pulse of this thing for so long I forget what it’s like not to be covering this story. This story. Can you even call it that? It’s the moment. It’s what happening and more importantly, it’s what’s happening next. So, buckle up.

Last night was a hulaballoo. Having torn through Europe, me and OneForce had to go our separate ways for awhile. More on that later. Thought I was dangerous for him. Too many of the wrong types of assholes looking for me. Course he had the same issue but I really thought I was doing him some kind of favor. Maybe I was. His "Preposterous Universe" paper laid it out perfectly and was extremely well received. People are asking questions all over the world on this day, I can assure you of that.

Could he have wrote it, banging around that empty castle in the Jungfrau’s with me kicking around, getting trashed and cursing out the Bush administration and the Punditocracy or whatever else? Blasting heavy music and shaking up the locals and just...well..being me? He probably coulda wrote it, I don’t know if he could stop himself now if he wanted to, but would it have been that perfect? I’d rather not guess.

More importantly, I can confess I might have flipped my cookies for a little while there. It’s tough to say. We’re travelling. There's lots of booze, girls and a host of party favors I’ll not get into here. Well, maybe I will but not right here. And there were NSA scum on my tail at least up until Amsterdam. The question was when had they picked me up? It’s already established that the white van parked across the street for so long that spooked me in the first place belonged to some dude my hot little roommate was banging. Cops towed it away not three days after I left, I’m told. But NSA’d been on me in Vancouver and I’d actually spoken to the jackals in Amsterdam and gotten to a place where I liked the fact that I had some governmental attention. Readership is readership. Would my future torturer have a favorite?

“I really liked ‘Just Got Here or Lived Here Forever,’” your brutish interrogator would ask you, a pair of red hot pliers fastened hard to your dingus, “is the fantasy nurse supposed to represent the American Dream?”

Besides, would I be here if I didn’t flip out a little? And if the NSA actually has been following me, what does it matter if I just anticipated them a little earlier?

I hear a steady banging sound, OneForce working up a head of steam with some filly he’d met last night. About time. Been blasting Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ as he humped holy hell out of her. Been a little while for him but to give the fella his due, he is actually trying to unify physics. I can only assume he’s trying to time the orgasm for when Bolero peaks. It’s the artful thing to do and any man in his right mind would be powerless but to attempt the same.

My little chickadee lay crumpled on the fold-out couch behind me. Gave me a sour look when I got up and started making hotel coffee. I may have closed my eyes for a few minutes but I don’t think I’ve slept. I’m paid to write whatever I like at this phase and let me tell you, for a writer who’s always had to steal the time to write whatever strikes his fancy, this is heaven. I just hope it doesn’t take my edge.

These days I'm getting more and more folks that want me to write about OneForce and to a degree I am, because you write what you know but that’s not specifically the story I cover or have been covering since SenseChange was created, back in late 2000. OneForce is a part of the story but not the sum total story because the story’s even bigger than some guy totally changing the game on everything from the realm of SubAtomicParticlePhysics to How the Universe Works. But he’s a part of the story because the story is Change.

Change. Before I was iSC or iSenseChange it was just SenseChange. The name was crafted before B-Rack Obama and every other politician in the world had picked up ‘Change’ as the mantra that will resonate with the People. The name was crafted because I wanted a name that demonstrated my profound and ongoing belief that we, all of us, as a species and a planet were and are on the cusp of massive, paradigmatic change. Couldn’t have told you then –or now, for that matter- if it was gonna be good or bad but change was coming. Change is here. And you know it is too.

So yeah, OneForce is part of it but just a part, you know?

Good Christ they’re really going at it in there. Even over the blaring orchestral number you can hear stinging slaps and flesh pounding flesh. Can hear OneForce as much as his filly, which is, as always, profoundly disturbing. Mine, though still sleeping, has an annoyed look on her face which would have put the kibosh on us getting together had I seen it last night. I may be a little judgemental but I expect to only see that face much later, when I’ll no doubt deserve it. The pace is picking up, a crescendo of climactic climaxes. a cacophony of cumshots. I’m in a pickle as I want to turn up 'the Hurricane' by Bob Dylan but not so loud that I’ll have to prematurely deal with this gal on the couch.

I’m not a ‘next day’ dude and I can’t pretend I am. I said a lot of sweet things last night that have nothing whatsoever to do with today. I will be glued to my laptop for the foreseeable future, for as long as it takes to encapsulate, to crystallize what I see happening and some gals just don’t understand how a computer screen can be more interesting than they are. Or why I want them to leave. It’s ugly but nonetheless it is that way.

OneForce stumbles out, the big galoot. He’s wiping off the end of his knob with a bathrobe that looks like somebody died in it.

“Jesus fuck,” I mumble over my shoulder, “what’d she do to you?” He looks like a stabbing victim. At least three empty bottles of Valpolcella Folinari solves that mystery for any would-be Sherlock Holmeses out there. He steps, barefooted into a plate full of old roomservice and barely even notices it, leaving little mashed-potatoe smears across the kitchen tile.

“All sorts of things.” He’s scratching his all-too-visible nuts and I’m shaking my head.

“You, uh…” I began, “you tell her who you are?”

“Yep. We’re in love.”

“Ohhhhhhhhh dude,” I cradle my still throbbing head in my hands, “you didn’t.”

“Yep. Told her everything. Who I am, who you are, what we’re doing, the whole shootin’ match.”

“Fuck off! You didn’t!”

He shrugged. “I love her.” I start softly banging my already throbbing noggin into the tabletop. OneForce helps himself to some coffee, scratching his all-too-visible nuts the whole time. “She’s coming with us. So’s yours. We’re gonna be a team.” Stirs his coffee with what necessarily has to be an extremely dirty finger. “Like Scooby-Doo.”

Now the bastard’s laughing at me, sloshing coffee all over our already putrid kitchenette floor. And, to be fair, I’m laughing at myself. He hasn’t told her anything. If I know OneForce he hasn’t told her anything but he hasn’t lied to her either. He carries with him the same obsession with Truth that I do, if anything, for him, it’s way more intense. And unlike me he actually attempts to practice what preaches. His Truths are based on mathematics, mine just on what smallish kernals of it can be gleaned from the heaping masses of crap and garbage we’re being force-fed daily by a buncha media-dicks and political hacks. Which means mine arise form a far more cynical source and does nothing to hamper me getting a little creative with it in my day-to-day.

“Hell of a thing to do to a fellow first thing in the morning,” I chastised him.

“Autumn!” he hollered at his gal in the bedroom, ignoring me. “Do breakfast?”

“Don’t do it,” I hiss at him. He's looking at my gal on the couch that’s starting to wake up. Breakfast. What a dick. He knows exactly what he’s doing to me.

Look, I’m not an asshole, okay? Well…I’m an asshole sometimes. Often. But in this case I’ve got stuff to do. I’ve got a prediction in mind for the coming elections and I have to write the thing up and launch it into BlogWorlde before anybody else nails it. But I can’t just predict the thing, you know it’s gotta look good, gotta read right off the screen, gotta piss you off once and make you laugh a coupla times. It’s gotta be worthy of the iSC brand. I have a readership.

All of which is to say that it takes time, loud music, massive spliffs and most importantly, no clammering gal I met and nailed last night. Maybe I am an asshole but I’ve been calling this election with astonishing clarity from almost a year before it even started. And choosing Biden as Bama’s veep in May of this year made me officially spooky. And now I have another feeling and it’s gotta be blogged and there’s old OneForce, fucking with me.

Besides all that, we have to talk. I made a realization and he’s really starting to hit it big and I’m a danger to him once more. And I need to talk about it with him but it’s too late.

“C’mon!” he smirks at me, the dick, “what’s your gal’s name? Betcha she wants breakfast, eh buddy? Eh?”

“Force!” I whisper/bark sternly, “knock it off! You know very well I have no fucking idea what it’s name is.”

It. I called her ‘it.’ It’s out of my mouth, I can’t take it back. I wasn’t even aware I’d said it until a gorgeous blue eye opens, eyebrows arched. Doomed. OneForce holds his breath, watching the scene unfold.

“Morning,” I say to a very non-plussed gal.

"It." All she says and all she needs to. Force tenderly grabs my gal’s big toe and gives it a playful wiggle.

"Aw c'mon, what’s your name or do I just call you Sweetie? Want some breakfast, Sweetie?” It takes OneForce very little time to totally disarm her, mostly through making fun of me, though she’ll never look at me with anything less than contempt from here on in, is my suspicion. My fancy footwork got entirely used up last night. But she’s giggling and nodding and stretching and laughing and very much a complete part of the OneForce Morning Coffee Fiasco. There goes my morning. He’s silently laughing his balls off whenever he can get away with it.

“Autumn,” he hollers at the bedroom, “have you met Sweetie? We're doin' breakkie!”

The gals are humming around, getting dressed and giggling and whatnot and OneForce is the very definition of charming-yet-rascally, all-too-awake fun while I’m a grousing, hungover jerk. OneForce works with it. I’m the butt of nearly every joke, like it’s him and the girls against grumpy old iSense. He’ll come up and ruffle your hair like you’re a five year old or something and you’d like to smack him one. And you would. If he weren’t such a big fucker.

How such a big galoot ever got into gravitation and meta-physics or actually had a mind in his head is anybody’s guess. One look and you’d expect him to take chairs in the head for a living. Its been good cover for him in our adventures. Undercover by being right up there, out in the open and over the top. Dressed to kill and yammering out of the sides of our mouths like great, coke-snorkeling CEOs. Men of Great Import. It’s how we blew right through the airport to Amsterdam and Freedom and in and out of a million little fracases across the world.

Roll with it, Sensey. It’s a part of the story now and there’s nothing to be done. I pack up the laptop and my gal grouses at me again. OneForce calls me on it and makes me up as the most insufferable heel if I’m going to bring my laptop to the breakfast table at this fine restaurant we’ll be at and by the time he’s through I may well have no choice but to abandon both it and my plans and roll with it.

Dear America, This Nobel's For You, Shut Up and Take It

2009-10-19T20:07:00.000-07:00

It could be that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize because the last President scared the bejeezuz out of thinking people everywhere. What better way for the world to encourage the American citizenry to vote for sane, intelligent, rational leaders that believe in discourse and diplomacy over preemptive wars? If they'd somehow voted in Johnny 'Bomb Bomb' McCain don't you think he'd be pushing the world for a brand new war with Iran?

Give him two, if you can.

Obama deserves it and so does, by proxy, every single American that voted, volunteered, wore a button or placed a bumper sticker that said vote for Obama/Reason/Sanity. I thank you, the world thanks you, here's your Nobel Peace Prize. I couldn't be more serious.

Hey, listen America, you guys are the Big Dogs and when you elect a stuttering halfwit with a daddy grudge to the highest office of your land it affects us, okay? I mean, directly. Don’t believe me? I have countrymen fighting, bleeding and dying in Afghanistan right now and they’ve been there this whole time, holding up their end of a rotten deal while Dubya fucked off to Iraq chasing god knows what for god knows why. Just barely missed havin ‘em in Iraq too. And you know what? Many of the Right wing nutters in my country had the same type of hard-on for Gulf Two as yours did. Just ask Canada's current Prime Minister. So here we all are.

Obama deserves it and here's why. If you, like me, have seen the world and specifically humanity edging towards a massive, all consuming Shift and if you, like me, felt like this shift could best be described as "Transcend or End", with the End team perhaps best represented by the likes of the aptly named "Dick" Cheney and his ilk, well, who leads the team for the other side? It just can't be debated. Even if you hate the man, or distrust the man or think no American president should ever be able to recieve the Nobel Prize, it just cannot be denied that the wide majority of people on earth would nominate Barack Obama as the Captain of the Transcend team, if pressed to answer the question. That's why he won it and that's why he deserves it.

Now, has he got everybody safely out of Iraq? Not yet. Afghanistan? No easy answers there but you know what? There never has been. The economy? He was dealt history's shittiest hand by a swaggering, snickering, half-retarded hick that broke almost anything worth breaking and within reach. Finance reforms? Working on it, with heavy opposition from entrenched interests including his own political party. Ditto health care. Ditto environment. Etc. And has he bridged the great political divide between Demosissy and Repuglican? Nope, and he won't any time soon but here's the thing: every time he hits a reset button with, like say, Russia, every historic speech he gives to the Arab world and even every reach-out to the Repuglican Party of No is further testament of his abilities, patience and long term smarts.

You chose wisely, America, and this Nobel Prize is the World speaking filter-free and directly to you. Good work. One president can't do it all, in fact he probably can't even do most of it. It's you. You have lot's more to do but take heart. So do we.

Canadian ClusterF@#k: Stephen Harper is a Scheming Dick

2008-12-28T10:44:00.000-08:00

Thu Dec 18, 2008 at 05:13:32 PM PST

Don’t like the state of your Canadian government or lack thereof? Join the club. An unnecessary election in which millions were spent yet nothing (and I mean nothing) changed, followed by a gang war between a divisive, neo-Rovian, Bush-lite incumbent and a bunch of boring geeks and incompetent losers whom very nearly seized the leadership of the country at the end of it? And where are we now, precisely? How about and a month-and-a-half parliamentary shut-down during the biggest global economic crisis in history? What the Christ are these idiots doing, you ask yourself, if you’re even half awake, are we Canada or Tanzania for fuck’s sakes?

Up on stage at the Beggar, against your will and headed for certain doom in the form of an impromptu band with no setlist and an inexperienced and clearly drunken drummer. Beggar owner Doug was supposed to sing back-up, having orchestrated this mess but is now nowhere to be found, not the first time he’s pulled something like this on you, depraved bastard that he is. Something about it reminds you of the crazed state of politics in Canada’s national scene, which is what prompts you, after slugging back a huge tankard of Guinness to describe your brand new, completely inept band as ‘The Coalition of Musicians.’ Why not? There’s some resonance there.

The crowd responds to it, you can see them out there, every single one of them wanting to hear you sound off on this new, latest and greatest of Canadian clusterfucks, because they ‘re all thinking about it and wanting to talk about it. But how is your Calgarian audience going to react when you tell them that their hometown boy is responsible for the whole mess and probably something of a Fascist and has learned only the bad things from his good buddy and former college cheerleader George ‘Dubya’ Bush. The band (sans Doug, of course) kicks in with ‘Roadhouse Blues’ in the nick of time, before you have the chance to blurt the following:

Stephen Harper kicked a sick and stinking dog in the guts and got a well deserved bite in the arse for it. What is now undeniable is that it was a waste of goddamned time, just like the election he called was a waste of goddamned time, no matter who you like leading your country in January. At a time where it’s probably never been more important for everybody to be working together to shore Canada up against some truly dark and threatening times, Harper rolled the dice with politics and division, the worst of which was by threatening to eliminate public funding for political parties. Funding being cash, cash being the lifeblood of any political party and after an epic loss by the Liberals during a time of Recession, a more obvious and public curb-stomping would require actual bloodshed. Or maybe nooses.

"I Hate All These Guys, Why Should My Taxes Go to Them?"
On the surface, and just on the surface, eliminating public financing for political parties sounds like a hell of an idea. Let’s spend the money on schools and roads or, better yet, why not pass the savings onto the people so we can all buy ourselves what I’m guessing amounts to an extra 6-pack at the end of the year? It’s a compelling argument until you realize that the alternative to public financing is private financing, which, always and forever, creates a government owned lock, stock and barrel by Big Business. It’s not rocket science. Ask America.

Private funding amounts to whatever you, me or the Big Corporations are going to donate to a nation’s political parties. So if it’s you and me, maybe it’s a coupla bucks but it’s probably nothing because what in the hell would we invest in a political party for, when a 24 of beer gets you a positive feeling and immediate results right away? Time and time again I’ve voted for the can of beer and have absolutely never been disappointed with my decision. So if we’re not donating, well then you have to now stop and ask yourself: who is?

Big business invests the money and it’s not just a case of beer but millions and millions of cases of beer with the understanding that they now own the candidate and thus the country. And what happens next? Levees fail. Wars begin over the blood of dead dinosaurs, paid for by the Citizens and future generations of Citizens while making Big Business rich and richer. Meanwhile the earth speedily converts into an ashtray as Big Oil scrambles to create an unresolved debate where there is none, courtesy of Big Media, transforming what's supposed to be an informed citizenry into a society of distracted, terrified and probably sleeping lemmings. And gibbering chimps get elected. And we’d all hate for something like that to happen, right?

For Harper to begin cheerleading the privatization of political party funding means, necessarily, that he’s okay with your government being owned part and parcel by the Corporations. He’s under no illusions in this regard. The Right wing is traditionally the party of Big Business so there’s a very natural marriage going on there which is good for Big Business and good for the Conservative Party of Canada but bad for nearly everything and everybody else. I would have voted no confidence too. Twice if I could have. So there you have it.

But shit, you think, maybe it won’t be so bad? "I’m playing bass" Doug assures you, "don’t worry about it." Bass plus back-up singer? We might just pull this thing off. Maybe we can bust out some 54-40. Or "Watch the World Die," by Everclear, that’d be cool. But it doesn’t feel like that’s what’s going to happen, not at all, and the hunted look of your compatriots around you don’t provide much assurance. What’s the penalty for dropping out at this phase, you wonder to yourself? Was it even possible? Doug’d have the room in an uproar. They’d hunt you down. No, skipping out on the deal is not an option. So you grin and bear it, you go up with what you got and you take your shot at it and you let the chips fall where they goddamned may. And you just don’t give a shit. As if to seal the deal you hear your name and not six seconds later a shooter coasts perfectly into your outstretched hand, a perfect slide from a girl with a pair of eyes a fella could get lost in forever. A quick salute and down the hatch. Fuck it.

Fat girls, Mopeds and the Bloc Quebecois
Harper’s defense against the dread Coalition can basically be summed up as follows: "The Separatists are coming!!! THE SEPARTISTS ARE COMING!!!" That’s a bit of an eyeroller coming from Harper, considering he’d arguably done more for the Separatist cause than any PM in history when he formerly recognized Quebec as a "Nation within Canada," depending, of course, how you choose to look at it.

Quebec, the French and Separatists aside, the Bloc Quebecois as a political organization can most aptly be described as a loose and dirty woman that everybody in town puts the screws to now and then and always piously deny to the high heavens later. Never the bridesmaid nor the bride, the Bloc Quebecois is the town pump and they get used and they get paid for it and they’re generally happy as a clam with the whole situation because they get to dress up real nice, enjoy a couple of nice meals and get all sorts of pretty gifts when all is said and done. So it has been, so it shall always be. Right now the Coalition is their sugar daddy but Harper himself, in spite of his feigned outrage at the current situation, brought this particularly ugly girl to the dance back in September of ‘04 when he was rattling the saber at the Martin government. And Dion, for his part, incoherently screamed at the outright danger, injustice and irresponsibility of banding with the Separatists. At least I think that’s what he was trying to say. And so it goes.

What’s Next?
For Harper? He will of course eliminate, for now, the incredibly dangerous notion of privatizing political funding, knowing as he now knows that his opponents, surprisingly enough, won’t actively allow him to murder them in cold blood. Beyond that, he’s basically got two choices: Push blood-and-guts political practices in the hopes of crushing his enemies and dividing the populace just enough to maintain a Rovian, 50% plus one majority victory the next time at the polls or stop rolling the partisan dice and actually lead the whole country through these, the darkest economic times in the history of the world. Maybe the ultimate question is whether a scheming dick can change his spots. Time will tell.

As for you and the so-called Coalition of Musicians, well, it’s going as well as could be expected, which is to say, not so well at all. You finally spot Doug over at the VLTs, ostensibly gambling but in actuality he’s helplessly laughing his ass off at the spectacle on stage. You flip the finger at him and, bastard that he is, he just points a finger atyou and continues laughing uncontrollably. "You’ll suffer, buddy!" you mouth at him, "you’ll rue." And he will. There’s a million ways to exact small revenge on your smart-ass buddy when he owns a bar.

In the mean time, though most sets are at least three songs long we cut it down to two during Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom County Blues,’ when your drummer slows his beat to a crawl for no reason whatsoever, beyond possibly not even knowing where he was. Christ, you think, is he blacking out? Does he need first aid? You and your coalition turn and look at him, wondering what the fuck it is he thinks he’s doing, but he’s chasing musical rabbits in his mind, oblivious to you, the band and even the audience. You slow down the lyrics and just wait for the whole awful thing to close but then, against all expectation, switch tacks and repeat a line from the song about rich folks and whiskey and cigars, only because you like singing the line and the Coalition of Musicians is already as awful as they can be. At this phase, why not repeat a stanza or two? Reverse style points. See how these things happen? Set finished, you thank our audience for not throwing even one beer bottle at you and beat a hasty retreat to the bar.

Dubya Nearly Smoked in the Head by a Pair of Shoes

2008-12-28T10:43:00.000-08:00

Sun Dec 14, 2008 at 08:23:33 PM PST

Jack,

Can’t stop watching the video of that dude throwing not one but two shoes at the President, who, it turns out, is actually pretty quick on his feet when he needs to be. What a shot! What a couple of shots! This guy is fucking deadly with those shoes, man! I’ve never seen anything like it! And I’m just about equally impressed with former college cheerleader George 'Dubya' Bush for moving so fast himself! These are two athletes at the top of their prospective games we’re watching here, makes you wonder if Bush has had to do a lot of duck-and-cover during his reign as America’s worst and most hated President of all time? Have there been other shoes? What do they throw at him in Tanzania? Istanbul?

It’s become my favorite net clip of all time, second only to that one where the ape sniffs his finger after scratching his ass and falls out of the tree. What do you figure? Guantanamo? Abu Graib? A book deal? I’m told he is (was?) a journalist, which means he’ll have some choice words about the whole thing, should he survive the next couple of weeks. And he ought to. Giving Bush a black eye for the holidays would have been the perfect gift to the whole world, America most certainly included. It’s a pretty good gift as it stands.

Chalk up yet one more in the irony column for the Bush Administration, Dubya nearly gets knocked out by a flung shoe when he's in Iraq promoting the New Security Deal. You believe it? You really can't make this stuff up. They keep surprising me, even at this late date.

None of which has anything to do with me dropping you a line at ______’s behest, regarding potential contribution of material to your many fine publications. Sure, I’m game. I’m thinking the way forward is take a peek at the last thing I wrote on a blog at the DailyKos regarding the Obama victory, which I’ve attached to this email for your perusal. If you can get past the swearing and terrible grammar you may or may not find some smallish nugget of wisdom worth a toss to somebody, somewhere and if this indeed is the case then maybe we have a pint and hash something out.

All for now,
iSenseChange

The Obama Victory

2008-12-28T10:41:00.000-08:00

I'm down at the Blind Beggar where, amongst a great many other things, I blog political news for their groundbreaking and wildly successful newsletter; "Beggar Blast". It's a Sunday, there's a band named "Double Ds and the B.J." up on stage and I'm drinking a coffee absolutely drenched in at least three types of booze. And trying to get my head around it all. The Obama victory. "Why not write it up for our groundbreaking and wildly successful newsletter," Pat advises me, after I yammered about it to him non-stop over a very decent soup. Like I have a choice to write about the thing but Pat is good about giving me a deadline to utterly bust and drag around with me. A topic this time as well, though I’d already assigned it to myself, had been writing about it for a few years now.

Getting drunk. With fun new friends that can possibly teach me guitar. Being served big frothy beers by some very unique and sexy girls. Gained a scribe along the way, which is invaluable to a blogger on the run who’s usually ripped when his best work gurgles up from the primordial ooze. But only when the background music ain’t loud and my scribe can actually hear me, which is seldom in this joint, which means you gotta grab a piece of ‘puter whenever you can and fire out what blasts there be. Because the moment has to be encapsulated. And this is not just a moment. It’s a Moment. Know what I’m saying? I’m betting you do.

What does the Obama victory mean? To me? The culmination of years of writing vicious and cynical diatribes against a land of fools ruled by monsters, an American dream turned to nightmare, a world powerless but to sit back and watch a once noble country eat itself alive. Suffice it to say, it got ugly for a while there. Real ugly. So ugly the temptation is to pull it all out and explore it once more, call out those evil jackdogs and pirates just one more time because it’s what you’re used to, man! It’s what you feel strangely comfortable doing. And why not?

Lemme get it out of my system: George ‘Dubya’ Bush is actually a moron. A swaggering, snickering, half-retarded hick that broke almost anything worth breaking and within reach. And lied obvious lies about it. And didn’t really give a shit about it. And probably never will. That even red-meat Republicans seem ready to embrace this otherwise universally accepted truth is all the evidence you’ll ever need. George Dubya Bush is less like a presidential figure and more like a character in a sitcom. Like an evil Balki Bartacamus. He is a buffoon and often seems more interested in talking about what he’s had to eat that day then pressing matters of global concern. I could go on. Forever.

Point is, how can you talk about the Obama victory without talkin’ bout Bush? The Bush presidency was the end of the old ways. It brought every corrupt and filthy detail of how business goes down in the Halls of High Power to the forefront where even the American Idol crowd ever so slowly realized something was rotten in the land of the Free and Brave: criminals were at large and in charge. And it was funny at first, until countries got invaded, levvies started breaking, people started dying and global economies started crashing.

What can I say? From thence came Obama. Yeah. Guy talking straight about the whole thing. Saw him first at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, the brightest light of a party about to lose what should have been a no-brainer of an election. That’s what you get for nominating a largish chunk of wood for your presidential nominee. I won’t go into it. This is about ‘Bama, who was basically a total unknown in ’04 that went out there and laid down the thunder on that crowd and said it like it was and blew the socks off of anybody that heard him, including this lil’ blogger from Up North. Made me turn down the cynicism for a while and just listen. Which doesn’t happen a whole lot to us hardened, political blogger types. Almost never.

Second time I saw him was maybe six months later when he was being interviewed by Charlie Rose and I sat and listened to the 30 minute interview. Thinking oh man, if only you could get elected. Jesus H. Christ, just imagine it. Guy knows exactly what’s going on out there and has vision and may even be one those ‘Great Men’ that America produces now and again. And right then and right there I felt he had a shot at it. What he was saying struck a chord and I felt that a fella slingin’ truths in this time of very obvious and almost universal deception could maybe do quite well for himself. Especially as the obviousness just keeps getting obviouser. "Never happen," I said aloud to a messy kitchen, "they’d kill him if he ever got serious. Too bad." And went about my day. Even then just a little bit hopeful at what I’d seen.

Reflecting on the moment, I make a shooter of tonic and beef from my sandwich (that I’m told I swore at, which is weird) and have it sent to Pat. I’ve done this only twice before. We haven’t spoken about it since and may never. My scribe returns with his comely lady-friend and described to me a transcendental moment of mercy surrounding a sluggish fly and his sneaker whilst taking a dump and the whole time I’m trying to figure out what to do with my truck. I’m s’posed to stay at the bartender’s place tonight but can’t because my brother’s nailing her and I’m certain the sheets are glazed. I’d rather sleep on the floor, which, I’m told, is probably no better. Hey, am I gonna get in trouble for this stuff? What are the rules here? And where was I? Shit.

In late March of ’07, long before he’d announced his candidacy I had the following to say about America’s next president:

"the question in my mind is not whether he is the best candidate for ’08 but rather if America deserves him. And if they can elect him without killing him."

A very ugly caveat now echoed by almost anyone I talk to: "If they don’t kill him," they say. And people have a point. Abe Lincoln took a double-tap to the back of the head in a theatre. JFK was slain in the back of a convertible on a sunny day by more than one gun. Martin Luther King was killed outside his hotel room and he knew it was coming and had already accepted it. What I’m saying is America kills its great men. Which means George Bush’ll probably live forever. But Bama?

This is where I’m powerless but to delve into that strange realm that I find myself returning to now and again in my own personal odyssey, a realm where all my Science and my Logic and my Reason flies the coop because for a few seconds at least there’s something more powerful driving the whole show. It’s something that says relax, Sense. It’s not supposed to be like that. You haven’t gone through all that, caught a glimpse of the Sublime and the Greatness only to see a Great man’s head explode in a crimson mist, a return to crime, deceit and universal ugliness. As awful as we can be, we can be also great. Both sides of the binary exist within each of us and therefore collectively. Maybe I’m nuts. Certainly I’m nuts but hey, prove me wrong. You can’t. You can only prove me right.

Maybe sounds weird coming from a dude like me but that realm is a Faith in something much larger and greater than we can ever possibly fully understand. And you can call it Jesus or Allah or the Great Gazoo, I guess, so long as I can call it the Universe and we can all just agree to disagree and be done with it. But the point of the Faith angle is that sometimes you just have to believe. And I believe it’s time for greatness again. From even us Canadians. But that’s a whole other blog.

A ‘Bama victory is the triumph of Reason. Over Fear and Idiocy. Over mindless patriotic chestbeating and cheerleading and the denial of simple Truths. It’s an about-face, as in the whole ship turns around and goes back in the exact opposite direction, away from the Abyss and just in the nick of goddamned time. That’s what Obama stands for, that’s what the American people chose and the whole thing leaves me in a kind of pleasant shock. And there’s this Hope thing. You feel it too? I think maybe you do.

Anywho, they chose and they chose wisely. An Obama victory. That’s the first snippet of what it means to me. How far can it go? Maybe that’s a whole other blog. But a few years ago I started writing something that I’ve never stopped writing and the raw thrust of it is that I felt the whole world was on the cusp of massive impending change, one way or the other. It’s a Transcend or End kind of trip and nothing that’s happened since has proved me wrong. A vote for Obama was a vote to rise above the sludge and the crap and hatred and the fear and to think about what we can actually do with all our technology and smarts and internets and whatnot. The polar opposite of an Apocalypse has in the past been referred to as a Renaissance, which it may well be, if this cat’s the real deal and I’m certain he is. All of which is also a whole other blog. At the very least.

Peace, friends. And tip your waitresses.

George Bush, Barack Obama and a Return to the Rule of Law

2008-12-28T10:39:00.000-08:00

Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 03:50:45 PM PST

GWB was off the hook for impeachment, much to the consternation of many Americans, to say nothing for the rest of the world-at-large but in the final analysis maybe that’s how it had to be done? Dems knew if they’d impeached Dubya, Dick ‘Go Fuck Yourself’ Cheney and the rest of Cobra Command that it would only foster the continued resentment amongst an already hugely divided populace. Dems knew smart money was in uniting over dividing and they did what they had to do. Pelosi took it off the table and Obama’s in. Does correlation equal causation? In this case, can we call it a contributing factor? Divide and conquer is how Rove wins elections, unite and transcend may well be the Pelosi-Reid plan as much as it was Barack Obama's.

So, what does it mean? It just depends on what’s more important: Justice for the most corrupt and incompetent administration ever or getting the right person behind the driver’s wheel in one of the most uncertain times in history? Can an Obama presidency be that Justice, then?

At any rate, moving forward, my feeling is the rule of law needs to be preserved. If he and his cronies committed criminal acts they must be tried and if found guilty must be sentenced for them. Ultimately, America is a Nation of Laws or else, as the whole world has recently seen, in horror, it is a Nation of base Corruption and Criminality. There ought be no middle ground. Law is law and no one, not even Bush Jr and dangerous Dick are above it. Getting away with criminality is part of the old regime, not the new one. Right? Right.

The timing? Not right now, obviously. Dubya is poised to do all sorts of creative things with his pardoning power before he inevitably burns the White House to the ground on January 20th, including, possibly, a groundbreaking preemptive personal catch-all pardon for himself and the rest of the neocon rogues, murderers and sneak-thieves for any and all criminal acts committed during the worst administration since Nero.

Just look what he did with his signing statements; turned the whole legislative process on its ear, something only possible if you have a historically corrupt Congress and a historically spineless opposition party. So, what does all that mean? Don’t launch any investigations until the law folk have a good chance to look at the wording of whatever comes out of Dubya’s office in early to mid January.

Once you’re there you have to sell it to the American public in a way that doesn't tear down all the unification, good feeling and outright national healing the Obama victory has generated. It’s a speech by Obama and it’s about Law and it’s about no one being Above the Law. You either respect the Rule of Law or you don't. It’s about an investigation team recognized universally as post partisan. It’s about investigating where applicable and sentencing only if necessary. It is, perhaps most importantly, about showing America’s children that criminality is not allowed by anybody, not even Presidents. And finally, I would argue, it’s about America healing itself.

Love to you, America. I've watched your journey intensively over the last eight years and am so proud you made the decision you did. The whole world pays when you elect stuttering fucktards over intellectual giants strictly because you think they'd be more fun to have beers with. In electing Obama you've given not just yourselves but the whole world somebody we can all look up to. And work with. And effect Change with.

-iSenseChange

p.p. Going to change my name. The era of SensingChange is over. Change is here.

Bailout Blues: Next Vote Also Doomed

2008-12-28T10:37:00.000-08:00

First one failed because it utterly reeked. The same bunch of filthy pigfuckers that lied their country into the Iraq war, bollixed up any kind of meaningful response to Hurricane Katrina and tore to shreds the United States Constitution would have next liked its Citizens to fork over nothing less than seven hundred billion dollars, with no oversight whatsoever, to a hand-picked Bush crony who’s at least as much to blame for the current deplorable situation as anybody else on earth. Even after the Democrats got their hands on the legislation, many Americans saw it as little more than the nadir of an administration, and indeed system, driven by greed, corruption, opportunism and fearmongering. And who’s to say they were wrong? Or right for that matter? Who knows for sure?

One thing is certain: the next bail-out will fail. Evidently nobody of consequence has really grasped the cause of the first one failing, which might be the one of only two simple answers in this whole mess: 700 billion sheckels is a lot of goddamned money, to me, to you and even to the Saudis. The sometimes competent Chuck Todd hit it square on the head this time when he investigated just who had voted for and against the Bush bailout and found almost to a man that it was Democrats and Republicans in precarious electoral positions. Meaning you don’t want your name attached to the breathstealingly massive bailout of the Greedy Dicks in a Greedy Dick System that put America and the world in the situation it now finds itself in, if there’s a chance you might get kicked out for it by your constituents less than a month from now. That’s it, that’s all, that’s the failure and as far as I can tell it’s inevitable that precisely the same thing will happen again, so long as the price tag is in or anywhere close to 700 billion freaking dollars.

Sure the new plan will have the appropriate nods to this or that, more stringent guidelines and oversight of this thing or the other but you know one thing that won’t change a lick? It’ll cost about 700 billion dollars. Which means the same Dems and Repugs that were under pressure to vote against it last time will be just as pressured to do precisely the same thing this time. Because people, all people, actually care about this, more than they cared to stop an illegal unjust war or torturing people or booting out obvious criminal thugs in the Whitehouse or even investigating their crimes. Because this is about money.

Thing is, people (all people, not just Americans) are stupid about a lot of things but the one thing that none of us can stomach is the feeling that we’re getting ripped off. For our money. We can believe in invading another country if you can appeal to our Freedom. Tell us it’s for Peace, Truth and Democracy and we’ll give the nod to the total annihilation of whole nations of toothless grannies and children. But treat us like suckers in regards to our money, to a lot of our money? This, all humans, regardless of Race, Color or Creed, find supremely insulting.

So the next bailout is doomed. What happens after that? The Dems produce their own piece of legislation, just as unlikely to pass? The senate takes a swing at it? Dubya makes yet another Executive Power move? Wall Street implodes? Economic anarchy? Chaos in the streets? Or is the whole thing made up? A huge manufactured scam on the part of the Wall St/Washington Axis of Greed? These questions and many more will probably not be answered in the days to come but take heart, Citizens. No one on earth knows what’s going to happen even six months from now, so how are you supposed to?

In the meantime, why not learn a little Chinese?

Republican Reckoning: the Rise and Fall of Sarah Palin

2008-12-28T10:35:00.000-08:00

Sun Sep 28, 2008 at 09:20:13 AM PST

"She makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero"
-Former Palin cheerleader and Right wing hack, Rod Dreher

The Republican Convention was a magical land where desperate people could say whatever they wanted, where nobody actually believed them but everybody applauded and sheds tears like it was the bestest most truthiest tidbit they ever heard. Why? Because every single person in that hall shared collectively in the Great Desperation. Every single tenant of their ideology they’d held so close to their red, white and blue breasts had had all the opportunity to work out for themselves, in the last eight years more than ever. What more can you ask for than a Red-Meat Holy-Rolling Oil-Man Republican Executive and a Republican dominated Congress? Like never before the Party had all the opportunity in the world to show once and for all the supremacy of their beliefs and leadership, and what’s the status of their America come Election Time, 2008? In the toilet, in so many ways I won’t bother to list them. You’re either paying attention or you’re not.

Anyways, from thence came Palin.

From thence came Palin, and so the Desperate Folk rallied and gathered and slavered and slobbered, gobbling hideous lies by the fist-full and furiously chanting "DRILL, DRILL, DRILL!" until tears poured from their eyes. But their new champion had arrived in the not unpleasing form of a moose-killing, lipstick-wearing pitbull/hockey-mom/Reagen in a skirt/beauty contest winner. And she gave a speech. "Hot damn!" exclaimed many the conservative commentator that night and in the 24 hour media cycles to come, "did she give a barn-burner of a speech!" She gave a barn-burning, game-changing holy hell of a speech that brought back the all the joy and triumph of being a Republican again! Ooooh those Leftie loonies were gonna get it! Ever skinned a polar bear, Hillary? HAH!!!

And how they basked in her genius, the glory that was Wasilla mayor Sarah Palin on that night. How could they not? She was going to change the way Washington worked, while making no mention of the fact that it was those very people in that very room and their peers around the country that are in charge of working Washington, (and Wall Street, it turns out) precisely the way it was! It was like Sassy Sarah had somehow gave them all this huge gift of both assuaging their guilt for their recently toileted America and never hinting anyone oughta take responsibility for it and to certainly not change one bit about the way they do business and make money. As obvious a lie as you’ll ever get but not for these people and not in this magical land. It would be the highlight of her political career, a moment where she didn’t walk nor ran but soared above the heads of all who watched. It would never get that good again.

From thence came Palin. Gave her speech on a Friday and by Monday we’d heard whiff of not one, not two but three different emerging scandals from either her time as mayor of Wasilla or outrageous, demonstrable lies from her slowly moldering speech. "I did a buncha things I didn’t really do," became the real upshot of that speech and by the end of the day Monday all sorts of bets circulated the internet involving the likelihood of Palin having to step down. Certainly there was brief respite when McCain gained a post-convention bounce in the polls from that magnificent speech of hers but from then on things just got worse and worse for Sarah Palin (to say nothing of the McCain campaign). Turned out one hell of a speech was all she had in her.

McCain and his crew were quick enough to spot it. It was opening weekend and she was America’s new darling and didn’t we all tune into our favorite Sunday morning talk shows to get another glimpse of this plucky beauty, another dose of this foxy frontierswoman talking trash inre the Democrats and promising the change the whole Universe seemed to need at that moment? But where was she? No interviews? Reeeeeeally? Not the whole next week, even? Not taking questions from anybody? Ugly thoughts began to rumble through the guts of the Desperate People like bad coffee. And rightfully so.

It was well established that she hadn’t been vetted at all, what if she can’t handle an interview, even a question? What if McCain (who many of them had never liked anyway and was running his campaign like...well...a 72 year-old man) had done the unthinkable and chosen a scandal-ridden, unknown airhead as a running mate? If this were shown to be the case then the Desperate would become something they had arguably always been but never been forced to admit, something somehow even worse than desperate: Reckless. And Foolish.

She had three (but really two) interviews and each was a disaster in its own way. Turned out that when she wandered too far from the talking points she came off as something of an idiot, a hard-trying child that would just barf out unconnected words when answering questions she was supposed to know but didn’t. One Kossack described this phenomena as a ‘word-salad.’ ‘Utter disaster’ probably works just as well.

It got to the point that even the Democrats and the far Left started to feel bad watching the Republican vice-standard-bearer muddle her way in, out and around not just one but nearly any question she got. Sure, it was a hoot at first but there was no joy in Mudville by her third (but really second) outing in the News. There was little sport in it for even the most hardest of bloggers when she launched verbal diarreah all over fellow chowder-head Katie Couric, who I also felt sorry for, for the first time ever.

What a moment. Imagine it: you discover your interviewee is a complete and utter kumquat and it’s kind of your duty as a journalist to expose that to the world, given that she’s one nearly-octagenerian-hearbeat away from the Presidency of the United States of America and thus, the World (well, not anymore but that’s a whole other blog). And in that brief moment you’re enshrined in history alongside the biggest political faceplant ever. Couric, for her part, didn’t test her too heavily because she didn’t have to. You either know how to play the bagpipes or you don’t. For a politician, it was becoming more and more clear to all and sundry, Palin was one hell of a moosegutter.

You wanted her and would-be Emperor McCainus to go down in flames but somehow...not like that? You know? Republicans may get pleasure out of completely crushing the souls of their opponent, stripping them of all dignity and laughing great belly laughs for decades about it but Democrats, it will be shown, have little stomach for such things and would rather look to the future. Politically, it may be their biggest weakness or their greatest strength. History will be the judge of that also. But I digress.

From thence came Palin. She was a shooting star. Now she’s dust. A National joke. Republican roadkill. What will she be remembered for? Her folksy chatter, sass and physical beauty will perhaps be missed by some. She’ll be fodder for the Democrats and other stand-up comedians for years to come. Most Republicans will wince at the mere mention of her name, perhaps reflecting upon their own humiliating moments where they’d desperately defended this muddle-headed chipmunk as the new savior of the Republican party and perfectly able to step up and take the reigns should her ancient crocodile of a ‘running mate’ fall face-first into his presidential cheerios. To the smart ones she’ll be the Republican’s reckoning, that final, undeniable realization that everything they ever knew or thought they knew were necessarily not so. And that they too had to change.

Obama-Biden '08

2008-12-28T10:17:00.000-08:00

Tue Aug 19, 2008 at 04:46:37 PM PST

At what point to political speculations go beyond mere amusement and bet-fodder to outright spooky? It’s one thing to have predicted Obama to take the nomination nearly a year before he throws his hat in the ring but that’s nothing next to predicting McCain in early December of ’07 (in the now epic The Republican Candidates are the Most Unelectable Gang of Freaks in American History). But then to go on and nail down Senator Joe Biden as Bama’s Veep in late May of this year? I know what you’re saying: who is this iSenseChange and how is he so dead-on-balls accurate for this election? How can we reward this latter-day NeoNostradamus for the sheer prescience involved in these utterly uncanny picks of his? What glorious accolades can we lay at his freshly oiled feet, what leafy laurels around his surely massive skull? Judging from the lackluster response to my admittedly weird entries thus far, I’m guessing a handful of reads and less than ten comments. Half of which are my own. Fuck it, says I. Ignore me at your peril. I am the Kossack Kreskin. And I have massive nuts.

That’s right, I said it: massive. But enough on that. Couldn’t believe Kos’d choose Kerry over Biden. Why not choose a largish chunk of wood instead? Look Kos, I like Kerry, think he’s a good dude but it’s already very well established that he’s about as exciting to listen to as a largish chunk of wood. Not to mention (yet mentioning) he was a limp dick at defending himself against some of the most obviously trumped up hack charges in history. Former Vietnam war hero gets trashed for being, well...a Vietnam war hero? Next to former cheerleader and just-barely-there-if-there-at-all National Guardsman George ‘Dubya’ Bush? Kerry’s your attack dog, Kos? What on earth for?

And sure, there’s always Hillary. If you’re freakin’ nuts. I believe I might have mentioned this before but it’s my position that Bama’d be smarter to eat his own face off than put that woman in the ol’ one-heartbeat-away-from-the-presidency spot. Do it and your next appointment better be a royal taster. Seriously. A hired geek to taste all your food before you do. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.

And of course Edwards. Whom I was cheering for to win the whole thing for a little while there due to a populist message that struck a chord within me: it’s going to be a fight to get the corporate greedheads to play something even remotely close to fair! Well, so much for Edwards. Ever. Cheats on his own cancer-ridden wife. But she was in remission! Jesus H. Suffering Christ on Crab Cakes. Decides to run for President anyways. Knowing full well that if it just happened to come out after he was nominated he’d effectively toasted the Democrats chances for what should be the biggest no-brainer election in American history. To say nothing (and yet saying it) of gift-wrapping the presidency for another neocon, the ramifications of which the entire freaking world would have to suffer. What a dick! Elizabeth too. Cancer victims, it turns out, can still be dicks. I’ll never, ever apologize for saying it. Anybody who knew and didn’t tackle him to the ground or hire somebody to tackle him to the ground rather than run for president is a dick or a double agent. Period. I show better judgment every single day I don’t jerk at work. Which, I’m proud to report, is the wide majority of days.

But it’s coming down to the nut of the thing, the Veep sweepstakes are coming to a close and it looks like Biden’s surpassed all comers and will be Bama’s veep. He’s an excellent choice for a host of blatantly obvious reasons but there’s only one reason he’s The Choice: in 2008 it’s less about what states a Veep can deliver and more about how he comes off on mainstream media outlets like CNN and whatnot. Because they shape the dialogue. Plain and simple. And he’s a freaking treat to watch. His comments get play because they’re genuinely funny or extremely well informed. His Giuliani-911 quip goes down in history as the second coolest one-liner of the entire campaign.

And the first thing they always do is ask him about whatever the latest global problem is and here’s the thing: gotcha reporting, obvious propaganda and narrative manipulation temporarily disappear and genuine journalistic curiosity oh-so temporarily takes over for even a twittering half-wit like Chris Matthews and you know why? Because these media hacks are genuinely interested in what he has to say in spite of themselves. Because Biden actually knows what the fuck is really going on. He knows! And then they go and ask him about whatever the Repuggie freaks are trying sling around and Biden comes off as above it, disgusted yet slightly amused by it and then gives them the full low-down in a language everybody can very easily understand.

Biden’s very likable yet he can launch raw fire and reeking brimstone when he feels the need and in this campaign, friends and neighbors? There’s need. Oh yes, there’s need. You need someone who can snicker at the obvious hackery and utterly torch some of the more uglier stuff that’s no doubt coming. Biden is that guy. Period.

Obama-Biden in ’08, Kossacks! Get used to it!

-iSC

p.p. other Kossacks that posted a Biden prediction as their #1 pick for Veep earlier than mine please drop me a line and a link and I’ll come check you out.

Your 2008 Vice Presidential Short-List Hotlist

2008-12-28T10:14:00.000-08:00

Sat May 24, 2008 at 11:43:55 AM PST

Alternatively: Obama Would be Smarter to Eat His Own Face than Pick Hillary Clinton for V.P.

As opposed to whatever you'd say Cheney's doing, in your far more traditional ‘top-down' styled administrations your VP really has one function and one function alone: Get your Presidential nominee elected. The flipside of which being some kind of cause-no-harm/don't-fuck-up kinda thing, which changes little once actually elected. That having been said and with out further ado I hereby present your 2008 Vice Presidential Short-List

Cutting edge (and still totally FREE!!!) political analysis and predictions below the fold.

THIS JUST IN!!!: alot of talk about Wes Clark (which I find unfathomable), Gore (unlikely he'd go for it), Sibelius is coming up alot, there's some good points on Kaine and there's an awful lot of Edwards talk...

*

NOT HILLARY CLINTON:
If Obama makes Hillary his veep I will gleefully admit I know absolutely nothing about politics and from that very moment will give up blogging forever. Take up gardening or something. Seriously. Because picking Hillary would be the biggest mistake of Bama’s political career whether he won the presidency or not. Especially if he won it! Jesus H!! He wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy, which, at this phase, may well be...Hillary Clinton?

She’s working the same Whitehouse as you? One heartbeat away, as they say? And she’s supposed to do what you tell her to? Facilitate your goals and strategies? Make your vision happen for you, even in the extremely likely event that the two of you disagree? Really?!? Are you kidding me? ‘Bama’s not insane and that’s what you’d have to be to handpick as your VP anybody, any creature of such raw, naked ambition and utter disregard for the basic Rules of Operation.

Hillary as Bama's VP is a preposterous, unthinkable idea and Obama knows it better than anybody on earth with the possible exception of Bill Clinton, who of course recommended it anyways. It will never, ever happen. We must move on and I’m exceptionally happy to.

JOHN EDWARDS:
I’m an Edwards fan but here’s why you don’t pick him as your VP: because he’s already had a shot at it and been a part of a losing election. It didn’t work out for the last guy and you don’t want to associate yourself with the utter misery that was the 2004 Presidential Elections, even peripherally. It’s not fair to him but it is that way. He’d far better serve you as one of the finest Attorneys General that America has ever seen.

BILL RICHARDSON:
Jesus, I hate to say it but here we go anyways: The Black guy picks a Latin guy when Race is already an issue in the nomination, when Billy Hayseed of the Deep South already has reservations enough?

Nope. Never happen. "There’s right and there’s wrong and there’s politics," one asshole said to another. Not fair to Richardson neither but there it is. Oter than that Rcihardson's principle characteristic is that he's a nice guy which Obama seems to already have sewn up quite...nicely. Ahem. And sure, there's some Foreign Policy advantages to choosing Richardson but if that's the qualifier in your VP selection do you choose Richradson or somebody else? You choose somebody else.

JIM WEBB:
He’s a strong choice, no denying it. I don’t think ‘Bama’s gonna choose him but there’s a lot of solid reasons to do so, primary of which is that he is a war hero in an election against a war hero during a time of War. If this were Election ‘04 then ‘Bama’d be nuts to go with anybody else.

But this isn’t in 2004. This is in 2008. A somewhat awakened American Citizenry have almost entirely discovered that the War was both a sham and a huge waste of money and lives. So what does it mean? Obama, having been one of a very few to speak out against it at the time it mattered most, has the Iraq War Debate well in hand.

Joe Biden:
Joe Biden is a cool dude. And he can talk Foreign Policy all day. And he can help you reach across the aisle because he’s got creds with Republican Reds. And everybody knows he’s a good guy, a smart guy and a guy that doesn’t take a whole lot of bullshit. None of which is the reason why Barack Obama will choose him as his VP. Barack Obama will choose Joe Biden for his V.P. because he interviews like a dream and comes across like he knows what he’s talking about.

And this election is all about interviews filtered and twisted through mainstream news outlets and then being deconstructed and wholly analyzed from, for the first time ever, full spectrum perspective. In this brand new FaceBookYouTubeBlogWorlde of ours. Which is a lot of sociotechno-gobbledygook that basically means you want somebody who is comfortable being interviewed by anybody about anything, will competently lay out your positions and perspectives whenever he can.

[faithful readers please note I am but a fledgling Kossack and have yet to master the intricacies of inserting the relevant vid into my blog. Please stand by]

And he’s gonna be like John McCain is my friend and a hero but he’s full of shit on this and it’s obvious and here’s why. You know? All with a smile on his face, like, pffft! McCain, you believe this guy? What is he thinking?

Because there will be bullshit. This is the Biggest of Shows. This is for all the marbles. This is American Politics. Courtesy of your Mainstream Media. And Joe Biden can call bullshit when he sees it and do it with authority. That's my two cents on why he should be Veep.

My two cents. What're you thinkin'? Do you get accolades around here for accurately predicting things like nominees, Presidents, Vice-Presidents and whatnot? A No-Prize? How do these things work?

Poll: Obama's V.P. will be...?

Hillary Clinton
1% 5 votes

NOT Hillary Clinton
33% 127 votes

John Edwards
5% 19 votes

Bill Richardson
4% 18 votes

Jim Webb
18% 68 votes

Joe Biden
12% 46 votes

Other (who?)
24% 91 votes

| 374 votes total

Neocon Versus Nazi: Godwin Be Damned

2008-12-28T10:11:00.000-08:00

Wed May 21, 2008 at 06:27:57 PM PST

According to Ray McGovern these NeoCons of yours were known throughout Washington, well before they got elected not once but twice, as the ‘crazies’ and at this phase we can all say rightfully so. Name a nuttier group in history. I know you’re gonna say it was the Nazis and yes, they had their own particular vision of how the Earth should be dominated by the Nation they served and yes, they did nutty, awful things because nobody was able to stop them, but would you say they were nuttier? Have you read "Project for the New American Century?" Maybe not the same game but certainly in the ballpark. You know, 'the Global Domination/Damnation' ballpark?

What if the only significant structural differences between Neocon and Nazi was that Adolph Hitler was but one man, whereas the PNAC were MANY of the most powerful men on earth?

Do I have to wait until they’re actually as bad as the Nazis before I can make a comparison? Because that’s not how it works in pro sports! "This guy might be the next Michael Jordan! Wayne Gretzky! Muhammed Ali! Babe Ruth! Jenna Jameson!" We do it in sports and porn but not politics or history? Why? Oh yeah, there’s just some comparisons we’re not supposed to make until it’s already Too Late, until the Damage has Been Done and the bootheel’s on my freaking neck? Well, fuck you, I guess. That doesn’t sound like a decent plan to me.

The biggest 'What If' of the early 2Ks is actually this: what if Rummy hadn't totally screwed up the Iraq War, what if it was somebody that actually knew what they were doing, somebody that had planned for the Post-war? What if America won? You think they would have stopped their mideast rip at Iraq? Or at Patriot Acts 1 and 2? Or at Abu Graib? Or at the Suspension of Habeus Corpus? Or at the utter shredding of the Constitution? Hey, insert your fave hideous neocon action/law/power-grab(s) here, Citizens, and a big seig-howdy right back atcha! Am I wrong? Wanna invoke Godwin on all this? Go right ahead but you'd be wrong to do it.

The point, if I do indeed have one here, is that there are not just one but many possible comparisons to be made between Bush and the NeoCons and Adolf and the Nazis and to label any argument in this vein as useless strictly on the grounds of some smarmy, blogworlde pseudo-law that you're probably not even using properly is actually dangerous. It comes down to one of those 'not knowing history being doomed to repeat it' scenarios. Don't kid yourself. Like maybe you think everything’ll always somehow get better, maybe through God or through some kind of latent Positivist leanings or you’re still just hungover from that Last Great Rip before the American Dream floats right down the shitter to be replaced by it’s polar opposite, the American Nightmare. A SuperPower turned Desperate and Depraved, a citizenry turned to troubled sleep.

Or not? Good news is it seems the worm has turned, these are the Last Days of Disco for the sick, neocon freaks and their sick, neocon dreams. But the point is that it happened. They happened. And they happened on your watch. As a citizen. Which means they can happen again. And if you think your doing yourself some kind of favor by turning a blind eye to all they have done to your planet, to your country and most importantly, YOUR CONSTITUTION, you're as wrong as it gets and closer to the citizens of Germany in the late thirties than any population before or since. Chew on that and then tell me to go fuck myself. I'm cool with it. I said my piece.

Righty oh. All for now.

-iSC

Poll: Any comparison between Neocon and Nazi

should be discussed on its merit
66% 22 votes

is ridiculous on its face
24% 8 votes

Godwin. Godwin! GODWIN!!! whew...
9% 3 votes

| 33 votes total

"Autocannibalism" or "How to Lose ANOTHER No-Brainer Election to a Neocon"

2008-12-28T10:06:00.000-08:00

Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 05:17:11 PM PST

I can believe you guys run elections like this. It’s amazing. I’m utterly agog. What the Christ is all this? How much does all it cost? Are you NUTS?!? They’re eating each other alive out there! McCain’s crew is just laying back, dropping long-range YouTube bombs and laughing their arses off! Hill’s junk is strewed all over the tarmac in Bosnia and the media’ll pump it up like it’s freaking WhiteWater even as it replays the latest and greatest from Obama’s Reverend buddy who just happens to be an angry Black man. Jesus wept! So freaking what?!? After Katrina, I’m an angry Black man and I’m not even Black!!!!

Divide and conquer is back. Except this is subdivide and conquer further. SuperPlusDivision. Politics of Fear melds with race. Throw some religion and politics in there and maybe you can never get together again! The Republicans are, to a man, laughing their asses off right now, I assure you, rightfully freaking so. The Democrats, somehow, are screwing even this one up. You know, fool that I am, I always assumed the first Post Bush election was supposed to be a no-brainer but NOT LIKE THIS! Jesus H. Suffering Christ, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER. It’s like a little mini version of your Electoral College where once again we find important decisions decided by something other than the popular vote. In this case you’ll find your Democracy subverted by yet another collection of old and mostly white and mostly male and entirely rich SuperDelegates whom, collectively, apparently know better than the voters what is best for...the voters. Am I alone in thinking; just what the blistering fuque is going on here? What’s wrong with most little pieces of paper with the candidate’s name on it wins? Why the extra step? Is there a Doctor Ockham in the house?

Is the Universe that fucked up that I now have to imagine a world in which (urrppp) McCain will be the next American president? After Dubya? The ‘bomb-bomb-Iran’ guy is on deck? The ‘strolling through the streets of Baghdad’ guy gets a shake at it? Must I consider it possible? Yes Virginia, and here’s why; Bush, dufus and moron that he most assuredly be and however it actually went down, managed to seize the office not once but twice. So yeah. It’s possible. And there it be. An idea so hideous that it tastes like rank puke inside my mind as I think it, but there it be. The "100 years is fine with me" guy is actually a threat. And he is. Don’t kid yourself. The value of having a gushing and horny media on your side is not to be debated, at all, in any way. And they fall all over this guy. This is already well-established and admitted by a lot of big-name Media vampires already, vampires like Joey the Scar and that hideous twit Matthews. Are you catching this? They’ve already chosen their sides. Media controls the message, media loves McCain...

Look, maybe this ‘Bama cat’s the real deal. Maybe it always takes just that one person, that archetypal, zeitgeistal hero to step up and name aloud the beasts that lurk in the bushes and slay them where they lay, for once and for all. That one person that starts a movement or maybe just accelerates one, gurgles it to the surface and maybe somehow that one person is able to turn the whole awful mess into something new. Maybe it’s a Renaissance. Maybe it’s his destiny. Maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. I am equal parts Hope and Cynicism at this point, not of him, not at all. But of them. And you. All of you. Some of you.

You.

What will you do, come November? Because you’re one of the players on the stage of a show that the whole world is watching. It’s like football with global implications. It’s the All American Soap Opera, complete with heroes and bad guys and sex and race and violence and hope and...well, you got me. It’s one hell of a show. I hope it turns out alright in the end is all I can say at this point. I’m a little concerned, myself. Have been for some time, to be honest. And I know some of you have too, but the question (and it’s key) is how many of you are concerned? Sure, there’s those amongst you that are entirely switched on and active and know the score but I wonder about that other number, not of those that are lost forever, the "Dubya For Life, Stupid and Proud of It" but the other, possibly far greater number. How many are just switched off and couldn’t be bothered? Can’t get the time off work, gotta watch their favorite shows, get drunk on the weekends and that’s about it. Work, tv, drink, fuck and die. The "Leave Politics for the Assholes" people. How many of those? That’s the real number. In any country. How many just couldn’t give a fuck? It really is the nut of the thing.

Like if this thing drags on to the point that you hate everybody involved and can’t be bothered with any of it? That’s the real cost of this primary season running so long and ugly as it has. Hills should fuckin’ bow out and just about everybody knows it except for the hack punditocracy that want this thing to go on for as long as possible for two, very simple and basic reasons:

1. If it bleeds it leads and Hills and B-Rack are bleedin’ all over the screen, 24-7.

2. It benefits Johnny ‘Bomb Bomb’ McCain, whom they love and will do whatever they can to elect in November. Rich keep getting’ richer and the people that matter live happily ever after. Right? Right. Listen, for the good of America and the entire planet, get this thing together, would you? Because the other side is lining itself up and they're ready to go. One more neocon gets one more gnarled hands on the dice. That's what's at stake here Photobucket and every second there is an undecided Democratic nominee facilitates the previously unthinkable.

Friends, bloggers, Kossacks, let us speak frankly. Never before has the fate of the entire world ever weighed so heavily upon the citizenry of one single nation. This one's for all the marbles. And it's all you, baby.

Peace.

And good luck.

-iSC

Poll: John McCain is...

Not a threat. A hundred years in Iraq? Admittedly knows dick about economics? Older than the Bible? Puh-leeze.
14% 7 votes

A threat so long as Hillary keeps SCREWING THIS THING UP
32% 16 votes

A strong threat because the Media loves him and will do everything in its power to hand him the presidency, for what should now be obvious reasons
54% 27 votes

| 50 votes total

Android to Ostrich: On the General Ashtraying of the Planet

2008-12-28T10:03:00.000-08:00

Sun Mar 30, 2008 at 09:40:22 AM PST

Dear [XXXXXX]

Will blog a response to this eventually (no names, no need for it. I represent the one side of what is becoming one of the dominant issues of our time and you the other), but have one thing I'd like some clarification of. It's certainly not shocking to me to hear someone from the status quo side use a term like 'Great Climate Change Religion' but it is when it comes from an intellectual like yourself and especially from someone with something of a scientific background, who actually knows what a 'theory' is, what 'peer-review' means etc.

To me, (and this may make you laugh, I haven't the slightest clue) but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the end-all be-all on it. They are the global consensus of dudes with the white coats and bunsen burners. If such a maassive amalgamation of subject-specific minds from another discipline, say Astronomy, came to me and said I should move because an asteroid is about to hit my house, well, you can bet yer ass I'd be moving. Pack up the kids, the bigscreen, the dog, the wife and what-have-you and I'm outta there. I haven't a doubt in my mind you'd do precisely the same thing and so would each and every sane human being on earth. The guy who didn't would be considered a nutcase and we'd all be saying he'll deserve it when he and his get reduced to molten space slag.

'Scientific American' and 'Science Magazine' both said the facts were in, the debate was over and Human Climate Fuckery is a dire reality. These are publications that I know both you and I have always respected, quoted extensively in our individual scientific endeavors because we knew the articles were backed wherever possible by peer review articles. Now they are what? Partisan rags? How? What on earth for? Is there some kind of conspiracy theory on this? And if so, why on earth do you believe it?

Seems like the other guys, the status quo guys that travel around the world on the oil company's dime quasi-refuting these things are the ones that can't even really nail down what a scientific theory or peer-review paper is. Whole thing reminds me of these Creationist idiots in the final analysis; "Ooooooh, you have a theory. Well, I can have a theory too. Everybody can have a theory on everything and mine is that the world was created by a benevolent, invisible, superhuman master to whom we must all bow and pray to or we will be sent to an eternity of fire and pain."

Hey, believe what you want, just don't try to call it science unless it's jumped the necessary hurdles, right? And there's the difference. Human Climate Fuckery has jumped the necessary hurdles. It's official. The consensus amongst people that know about these things is that this is the Real Deal and the debate is done and it's time to figger out our way outta this. Or to at the very least accept the general ashtraying of the planet and saying you like it that way. I would respect that more than abject, baseless denial and ostrichery.

Seems like the only actual scientists that represent the status quo side are not climatologists but geologists. Why do you think that is? Am I wrong? Gore's got legions of the world's finest climatologists backing what he has to say but who's the big status quo champ on this, what's the name of the Bizarro world Gore? I'd love to check his background out and read what he has to say, if in fact he's an actual climatologist or backed by actual climatologists and not just some fiendish stooge on the oil company's dole. Any leads you can provide me will be ruthlessly tracked down but I doubt you can offer anyone up...? Hey, prove me wrong, you know?

Regardless, I would speak more on this with you, in this laid back fashion that is the email. The tech is perfect for such a thing, given that we're both busy with all manner of things, respond when the spirit strikes you and I'll do the same. And by all means, feel completely free to call me an android so long as I may in turn call you an ostrich, and, as such, I'll just go ahead and offer the following warning about sticking one's head in the sand: it leaves your ass exposed and some day you're just bound to get fucked.

Forever your friend,

-iSC

Poll: Why is Global Warming still denied in spite of all evidence to the contrary?

Fear of Change
8% 2 votes

Fear of Comfort Level Disruption
48% 12 votes

Fear of Imagined Costs, Though New Industry Always Means New Business and New Jobs
16% 4 votes

Big Media has a Very Base and Obvious Interest in Creating Debate Where There is None
28% 7 votes

| 25 votes total

Fantasy Obama Response on Olbermann, inre 911

2008-12-28T10:00:00.000-08:00

Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 07:09:25 PM PST

"It seems my pal the preacher thinks the terrorists attacked because of foreign policy during the last half century. George Bush thinks its because they 'hate freedom' and that we should go shopping. Maybe you, Keith, think it was culture-envy and maybe I think it was for all of these things. And more, like I'd throw in the part about how cultures often degenerate towards evil ways when immersed in poverty, inequality and tyranny. What if it's all those things? What if it's a few more reasons that you and I haven't even thought of yet?"

"See what I'm getting at?"

"Thing is, well, I know what Dubya says about these things and I know what guys like Kristol, Rove and O'Reilley have to say about why the terrorists attacked on 911. But you could spend the rest of your life organizing, categorizing and presenting all the millions of ways the Roves and O'Reilleys have been wrong on just about everything they ever coulda been right about. Doesn't sound like alot of fun to me and it won't do anything towards addressing what has happened and what to do about it but you could certainly make a career of it."

"The upshot is, I know what the Roves and O'Reilleys think about it but I don't know what you think, Keith. I don't know, offhand, what Hillary would say about it. And I don't know what percentage of America thinks it was because of FreedomHating or CultureEnvy or our Foreign Policy but you know what? I'd be interested to know. Wouldn't you? So why don't you ask them these questions Keith and more importantly, why don't you help us listen to ourselves? I watch your show all the time. You might just be the man to do it."

"Point is there's never been any kind of deep, National Debate into the Big Why of 911. Sure, we had different collections of pundits serve us up whatever platitude best represents their network's place on the ideological scale and fair enough; we should at this point expect little more from them. But maybe now's the time for us to move beyond media consensus shaping and ask the question amongst ourselves as a populace. You know?

Listen, we got hit. Hard. Okay? And it shocked us to the core. All of us. King Hell Redneck Righty and Bullgoose Loony Lefty alike. And here we all are. So let me ask you this: has enough time passed that we have recovered enough from that awful day that we can now brush the dust and rubble from ourselves and become capable, as a People, of discussing amongst ourselves, openly and holistically about what has happened that day and in the days months and years prior that may or may not have had a role to play in the events of September 11th, 2001? Wouldn't that actually be a very healthy and cathartic thing for a great but still healing society such as ours to do?"

"To debate amongst ourselves where necessary? To examine all relevant evidences and come to a consensus that is best represented by them, not some media consensus and certainly not what consensus there be within the very closed and heavily secretive Bush administration that has been so wrong and mendacious on so much. I'm talking about a consensus developed by us! We the People! If not now, when? If not us, whom and if not America, then wherever on earth?"

"So let's have that debate amongst us, amongst all of us. In spite of the numbers it seems my opponent is hellbent on dragging this process out to the bitterest of ends, so I've got the time. Let's embrace this chance to open a national dialogue about the biggest "why" never openly addressed by about 911. It's not unpatriotic to ask 'why,' not in the America I grew up in, Keith, and not your America either, I'm as certain of that as I am that the Sun will rise tomorrow."

Exeunt.

Blogger's Note: In the interests of full disclosure the blogger would like to at this point announce that he is not an American citizen, that he is fully aware he is delving into some sensitive issues here but he considers himself your friend and is watching your elections like he's addicted to them. It's better than football but the ramifications are so much larger than a statue or cup. Be well. In spite of what you see and hear from your news outlets every day, many in this world are looking to not your politicians but to You the People for the type of Change the whole world needs. Do a friend a favor and be that Change, would you?

Poll: The terrorists attacked on 911 because...

America's foreign policy for the last half Century
63% 45 votes

FreedomHating
5% 4 votes

CultureEnvy
2% 2 votes

Immersion in Poverty, Inequality and Tyranny
28% 20 votes

| 71 votes total

Barack's Staffers are Not Idiots and I'm a Dick

2008-12-28T09:57:00.000-08:00

Tue Feb 26, 2008 at 09:02:00 PM PST

Your opponent shows up in a coffin, nailed up tight but for one or two empty slots, for which you have both nails and hammer in hand. What do you do, what do...you do? If you're Barrack Obama in the 20th Democratic Nomination Debate, nothing apparently, or at least not enough. For which I don't blame him specifically, I quite like the fellow and think him vastly superior to his hawkish opponent. But his staffers should be boiled and eaten for not making him tee up on the obvious, easy ones. Don't you think? Is it just me? I mean, I understand the 'taking the high road' but man, give somethin' to the fans, would ya?

UPDATE: Changed the title of this little blog 'o mine due to massive and quite justifiable protests against the very idea that these same staffers that have obviously worked very hard and played no small role in taking 'Bama to where he is today, poised to capture the Democratic nomination, could possibly be idiots. I withdraw the assertion without reservation and in my own defense all I can say is...well...don't blog angry, people! I was told it's too late to change said title yet did it anyways. Apologies to all involved, where applicable, have a nice day

*

Hills talks about her Iraq vote and the preemptive war and says, and I quote

"President Bush waged a preemptive war and I warned against it."

You catch that? She warned against it? When?

"Tonight, the President gave javascript:void(0)Saddam Hussein one last chance to avoid war, and the world hopes that Saddam Hussein will finally hear this ultimatum, understand the severity of those words, and act accordingly. While we wish there were more international support for the effort to disarm Saddam Hussein, at this critical juncture it is important for all of us to come together in support of our troops"

I see no warning there on the Hill's part. you? A warning would be like saying "look, don't do this. We shouldn't invade preemptively. It's sets back the internationalist movement about a thousand years and makes us look like power-mad hegemonist jerks. Just...stop it."

Hill's saying she made some kind of adequate warning against a premeptive strike doesn't jive in any way, shape or form and in a debate you hammer an opponent for stuff like this. Obama let that line, that ludicrous line about Hill's warning float by. It's bloody distressing to me. What else? Oh yeah, here's a goodie:

"Lots of people were speaking out against the war."

Really? Lots? Like...um...politicians? You mean, prior to the invasion itself? That's horseshit. Complete and utter horseshit. It totally denies the environment of the times in which ANY anti-war talk was denounced wholesale by both major political parties and shouted down widely through the supposedly free US of A. I remember Gore speaking out about it and getting utterly slagged by the entirety of the mainstream media, from far Right to Centrist (sadly, not for the first time nor last) and nobody really coming to his defense. We know hubby Bill said bupkis about it until 2008(at which point he claims he was against it, though since he never spoke out about the impending, massive, American-made disaster we'll just have to take his word for it) and Hawk was as big as cheerleader for it as anybody on the Left. As anybody you care to name, bar none. Lots of people were speaking out against it? It's revisionist history and it's actually insulting to those of us that marched and protested and wrote and blogged and debated against the whole godawful thing. She shoulda been slagged for it, it was an easy point to make and Barrack chose not to, much to my consternation and my dog's good natured concern.

The perfect example though? Free Trade, how shite it's been for America and how Hill should take responsibility for it if she's taking responsility for everything else Bill did. They talked Free Trade but Obama held off the easy point until Russert basically dragged it out of him with a clip he'd made. Had the question not been asked, the point would never be made that Clinton, if sharing responsibility for all the accomplishments of her hubbies presidency ought also take responsility for the hideously tragic NAFTA plan.

My point is, don't hold off on those easy points if you want to put the nail in the coffin. That's it, that's all, and maybe Barack's too nice a guy to do it but if disaster strikes and barrack Obama manages to lose this thing I guarantee you, it's because he didn't knock the nobrainers out of the park.

All for now.

-iSenseChange

Bases, Boots and Burger Kings: Dubya's Real Legacy in the Middle East

2008-12-28T09:52:00.000-08:00

Thu Feb 21, 2008 at 07:31:26 PM PST

Sure, we all talk about getting out of Iraq. Don't get me wrong. I knew the whole thing was going to hell in a handbasket the second I heard Dubya bluster at a world that was at the time scrambling to help America any way they could, "you're either with us or against us." It wasn't long after that me and a few billion of my friends hit the streets in our many lands to protest the war as it approached, wherever, whenever and however we could. Many of us found our literary voices blogging against the war, tyranny and fascism and made friends, shared concerns, fears, hopes and a collective sense of massive impending change (hence, by the way, the name). But where does it all lead me? Simply this: As for getting out, I mean, totally getting out of Iraq, none of you reeeeeeeeally think that's going to happen, do you? You understand that it doesn't matter even slightly who you vote for in this regard? That it's simply not going to happen?
Intro
You must enter an Intro for your Diary Entry between 300 and 1150 characters long.

Sure, we all talk about getting out of Iraq. Don't get me wrong. I knew the whole thing was going to hell in a handbasket the second I heard Dubya bluster at a world that was at the time scrambling to help America any way they could, "you're either with us or against us." It wasn't long after that me and a few billion of my friends hit the streets in our many lands to protest the war as it approached, wherever, whenever and however we could. Many of us found our literary voices blogging against the war, tyranny and fascism and made friends, shared concerns, fears, hopes and a collective sense of massive impending change (hence, by the way, the name). But where does it all lead me? Simply this: As for getting out, I mean, totally getting out of Iraq, none of you reeeeeeeeally think that's going to happen, do you? You understand that it doesn't matter even slightly who you vote for in this regard? That it's simply not going to happen?

There are people in Washington ... who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq and they’re looking for ten, 20, 50 years in the future ... the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in thegulf region, and I have never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi people that ten years from now there will be no military bases of the United States in Iraq.
– Former President Jimmy Carter (Feb. 3, 2006)

I hate writing it. It's hideous. But here goes: America has a huge oil problem. Mideast has it but a wide majority of the Mideast hates America to bits. America now has permanent Superbases that they will inevitably fill to the tits with soldiers armed to the teeth and tanks and equipment and infrastructure and landing strips and guess what? You just never, ever leave there, forever, no matter if it's Hills, 'Bama and especially John 'Bomb Bomb Iran' McCain that takes the Oval Office next. It absolutely doesn't matter one little bit and the sooner you understand this the sooner you understand what's really going on in America, like say, with your lameduck Democratic congressional majority, for starters, who've had enormous difficulty standing up to the least popular president in American history.

Ultimately, these enduring bases are the real legacy of George 'Dubya' Bush and the biggest argument you can muster against the idea that he's just a grinning chimp and the biggest argument I can muster that he's actually the Kaiser Sose president. Act like a dummy, just get your troops and guns where you need 'em and leave 'em there. The Dems'd be nuts to remove them, powerless to do anything but accept that for the rest of this century you can bet yer sweet bippy there will be bases, boots and Burger Kings in America-controlled Iraq. Boots on the ground overtop the greatest material prize in the history of the world. That's your Mission Accomplished, for you. The rest is just window dressing.

Pull out of Iraq? Entirely? Like, out of what will end up being at least 14 enduring SuperBases? Just because the Tyranny of the Majority demands it? You think they care? HAH!!! Not bloody likely, man, though the idea is cute or maybe it's just 'quaint' like Dick Cheney and the NeoCons like to say. But the Dems are in it too. They know, each and every one of them, as well as anybody else what the situation is Over There.

What do you think they're going to do? Tear down these bases, brick by brick, hang the cost and the immense strategic advantage smack dab in the middle of the middle of the East? Or do you just leave them for whatever lapdog or madman comes to own Iraq in your absence? McCain's a shmuck, a fool and a proven ratfuck liar but when he talks about a hundred years more in Iraq he's alot closer to the Truth then what 'Bama and Hills have to say about it. Those bases, folks, ain't going anywhere, I promise you.

Hey, shit, love to be wrong on this, absolutely love to. Show me how and I sleep better instantly, guarantee you.

Poll

Ending the War vs Enduring Iraq Superbases: What Will Be Done?

Tear 'em down brick by brick, hang the cost and strategic advantage
42% 11 votes

Leave 'em for whatever lapdog or madman ends up in charge
23% 6 votes

Fill 'em with soldiers, weapons, tech and infrastructure and enjoy your toehold on the MidEast
34% 9 votes

| 26 votes total

Gonzo Letters: Make News TV Celebrity Free

2008-12-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 07:29:48 PM PST

From: XXXXXXX XXXX (XXXXXXXXXX@hotmail.com)
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 5:09:47 AM
To: letters@msnbc.com
Subject: Celebrity Free News TV

To the good folks at the MSNBC,

Can somebody (anybody) explain to me why a smart fella with such a smart show like Olbermann and his ‘Countdown’ has to routinely devote his Number One Story to infotainment news crap? I betcha it drives him crazy. Prob’ly makes him puke in his mouth every time he has to mention the latest round of excruciating minutia involving Paris Lohan driving drunk or Britney Hilton chuggin’ dick. At least, I hope that’s the case. Any chance you cats can get rid of the infotainment crap and keep Olbermann focused with his generally lazer-like intensity on the politics, universal deception and other affairs of state and global importance?
Intro
You must enter an Intro for your Diary Entry between 300 and 1150 characters long.

From: XXXXXXX XXXX (XXXXXXXXXX@hotmail.com) Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 5:09:47 AM To: letters@msnbc.com Subject: Celebrity Free News TV To the good folks at the MSNBC, Can somebody (anybody) explain to me why a smart fella with such a smart show like Olbermann and his ‘Countdown’ has to routinely devote his Number One Story to infotainment news crap? I betcha it drives him crazy. Prob’ly makes him puke in his mouth every time he has to mention the latest round of excruciating minutia involving Paris Lohan driving drunk or Britney Hilton chuggin’ dick. At least, I hope that’s the case. Any chance you cats can get rid of the infotainment crap and keep Olbermann focused with his generally lazer-like intensity on the politics, universal deception and other affairs of state and global importance?

URL:
http://
Label:
Image

* iSenseChange's diary :: ::
*

Point is that there’s a market for it. People want it desperately and what intellectuals remain alive and awake desperately yearn for intellectual discourse on what really matters, considering Olbermann and the Countdown nothing less than a beacon of Truth in a time of near omnipresent bullshit. What a disappointment for this beacon to be so brutally yet routinely extinguished at the end of each hour with the latest non-update on what some beautiful idiot did to get him/herself in trouble this week. I can't believe that people still care. Do they? Even now?

Britney’s latest round of weirdness serves the point only too well. It works out like this: if she’s genuinely sick then this necessarily makes the ongoing coverage of what is obviously some kind of mental illness genuinely sicker and the People, for following it but probably pretending to others that they’re not, sicker yet. If she’s not sick and just doing fuck-up cartwheels for camera attention then it works out the same way. She’s sick, the press is sick and so are the People.

See also: depraved, see also: pathetic, see also: ghoulish

Look, I understand ratings but does this kind of lame shlock help Keith and MSNBC or hold you back? You have an opportunity here. Press forward, not back. Do something worthwhile. Celebrity shlock is part of the problem and somewhere inside your collective heart of hearts y'all know this. So gimmee the Real Story, fellas.

In the fervent hope you'll make my news t.v. celebrity-free,

-iSenseChange, DailyKos blogger and eminent sage

p.s. the comedians, to a man, are hideously unfunny to the point of embarrassment for all involved, viewer most definitely included.

American Lemming

2008-02-08T16:35:00.000-08:00

Wed Feb 06, 2008 at 08:21:38 PM PST
Three reasons not to pay attention to anything Britney Spears ever says or does:

If this latest round of weirdness means she’s genuinely sick then this necessarily makes the ongoing coverage of what is obviously some kind of mental illness genuinely sicker and you, for following it but probably pretending to others that you’re not folowing it, sicker yet.
See also: depraved, see also: pathetic, see also: ghoulish

If she’s doing it for attention this necessarily makes her smarter than both the press and far more smarter than you, which I would hope you find very troubling. I do. Know why? You are the one that gets to decide who will become the next leader of the free world. The press has an excuse: you. Celebrities don’t matter even one bit unless they not only decide to do something important but actually carry through with it and accomplish it. Until then, stop. Just stop. It doesn’t matter who’s dating whom, not even a bit. Put your little magazines away. Forever. And get a life.

Yes sir, were it up to me? My news tv? Celebrity free. Betcher ass. Can somebody (anybody) explain to me why a smart fella with such a smart show like Olbermann and his ‘Countdown’ has to routinely devote his number one story to infotainment news crap? I betcha it drives him crazy. Prob’ly makes him puke in his mouth every time he mentions her. At least, I hope that’s the case.

Because here’s the thing: America sleeps. Still. So many important things and issues with huge ramifications, so little time and what’s the one thing the fiends in charge of hurtling your country ever forward towards the largest faceplant in history know beyond a shadow of a doubt? That you are the most easily misdirected populace in history. And they’re absolutely right. And a full three quarters of you (this is me being generous) are almost completely asleep to anything beyond entertainment, work and getting drunk.

Hate to say it but even the enlightened amongst you are not paying full attention, which means I'm talking to you, Kossacks.

Anybody reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally genuinely impressed with either of the main Dem candidates platforms on either Health Care or even the Environment? Really? Because these are your people. You are fighting tooth and nail to get these people into office. Is what they’re proposing acceptable to you? Is it enough? Should health care be ‘affordable’ or should it be free? Because I’ll tell you something and I know it to be true: what’s affordable now goes up in cost over time, especially when the Repubbies get their hands on it and in no time at all your right back where you started. Which is going bankrupt because you got sick. Or hurt. Affordable? Are you kidding me?

Lemme ask you this (as the rants keep on coming):Is it enough to create more jobs in the Green sector or do you have to actively take on CO2 emissions, drastically transform public transit and the way each and every citizen in the First World now lives their lives? And not tomorrow, not in 2050 or 2025 but, as the Pope oughta be sayin' but ain't, Right Fucking Now! Why don’t you ask Al Gore what he thinks about 2050 or 2025? He’ll tell you (in vastly grander terms) that you and anybody that talks like that is patently full of shit. And he’d be right.

As for the war? How on earth did Hillary get this far? Has she or has she not been every bit John McCain’s equal in cheerleading this wrongheaded, gawdawful Iraq war until even as late as 2005? 2005! That’s a lot of years to be wrong! How did this happen? How is a hawk still in it for the Dems, how did she ever get a lead in the first place, let alone keep it? What the hell is going on here? You want to put a hawk in? Reeeeeeally? You don’t think hawkishness has been a big part of the problem? Not only for the last eight years but like the last sixty? You don't think another approach is, like, maybe a good idea? You still going to be championing unilateral preemptive striking when China's the big superpower? Somehow I don't think so.

This has been a rant. I realize that now and I apologize. I realize that it started with Britney and ended with Hillary and I also realize that makes me look like some kind of misogynist. I know some of you’ll be pissed that I have trashed and continue to trash Hillary for her consistently wrong stance on both the ongoing Iraq War and the still potentially impending clusterfuck in Iran but what can I do? I’m anti-war and she's very clearly not and I challenge anybody to deonnstrate otherwise or you can just quit yer bellyachin'. Can't do it? Knew you couldn't. I think it's a mistake to vote for her or even consider voting for her. To hell with it. I love women. I think they’re our real hope. Because man has had all the opportunity in the world to get this thing right and we have routinely screwed the pooch in every way possible, time and time again. I said it before; the second Oprah Winfrey decides to run for president I will gladly sing her praises from the highest mountaintops.

In the meantime, it’s incumbent upon Americans to wake up, pay attention to what’s important and hold your candidate’s feet to the fire, be that candidate the white chick or the black dude. You want free health care and you want not only change but massive change to fight Global Climate Abuse and you want it not now, not fifty years from now but Right Fucking Now and not only that, you want the corporate stranglehold of the citizenry to be banished once and for all. That last one sound impossible? Repeal one law and it’s done. Didja know that? One law. Look it up.

All for now. I can only hope I didn't make anybody puke in their mouth.

Hill the Hawk: Actively Impeding Troop Withdrawl Since 2005

2008-02-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 11:16:59 AM PST

I have for the last few years had much time to reflect and write upon the many awful ways in which mankind is doing many awful things to himself, his neighbors and his planet. On many occasions (and not just to pick up chicks but I won’t say never) I’ve been known to say that I was more than happy to offer my full-throated support to any woman that felt like giving global leadership a try just because Man has been just so consistently stinking awful at it. I felt (and feel!) that women absolutely must be better equipped to organize life in a sustainable way from an evolutionary perspective if nothing else. And you just have to believe that, also from an evolutionary perspective, they'd be (they would generally be. Be careful, Sense!) less likely to throw their sons and daughters into the godawful maw of war and even apocalypse. That's the hope, at least, and without you ladies stepping up I have a strong feeling the whole human experiment is utterly doomed.

Having said that, when Oprah Winfrey decides to run for President of the United States of America she can of course count on my unreserved endorsement and whatever support she asks of me. But Hill the Hawk? Not on your freaking life, buddy, but glad you asked.

If you are against this awful, unwinnable Iraq Mess you ought to be against its enablers, of whom Hillary Clinton is most assuredly one. A strong one. Not just for her original vote but for not apologizing for that vote or admitting it was a mistake. Not just for every artful dodge or meandering misdirection she applies whenever the subject comes up these days but for each and every effort she’s made to continue this war along and debilitate dialogue on the anti-war front. Clouding the issues by repeating NEOCON TALKING POINTS. Think I’m wrong? Why not take this easy test?

WHO SAID that a rash of suicide bombings was actually a positive thing because it meant the insurgents were getting desperate, repeatedly rebuffed calls for timetables, stated that a withdrawl of American troops would be a "big mistake," and said as recently as 2005 of Iraq that "I think you can look at the country as a whole and see that there are many parts of Iraq that are functioning quite well," in spite of all evidence to the contrary as the country in question travelled its way down to inevitable anarchy?

WAS IT:
a) Bill ‘the Bloody’ Kristol
b) Dick ‘Darth’ Cheney
c) Hill ‘the Hawk’ Clinton

ANSWER: all of the above, though the last quote comes direct quote from Hillary.

So, that's the impetus of the title of this lil' blog of mine (I'm gonna let it shine!) and it's the truth. She has not only voted in favor of Iraq Deux but she has actively impeded troop withdrawl from this awful unwinnable war since at least 2005. Which means she has enabled this war nearly every step of the way. Which means she's also at least partly responsible for each troop that has died in the last few years, as much or more than anyone else in the Democratic party and more than a few Republicans! Am I wrong? Tell me how. Iraq Deux was and is, from start to finish, an illegal and morally unjustifiable enterprise and it's consistent cheerleaders deserve no accolades, let alone presidencies. It deserves to be and is the number one issue in the land, so the hope is that you vote accordingly, yes? I think so.

Then there's the whole voting-to-label-the-Iranian-whoozitswhatsiz-as-terrorist-organization thing. An interesting vote, one that makes a component of Iran's mitary a terrorist organization, which, it follows, means that by definition America ought to be able to attack them in this neo age of preemptive striking countries that harbor terrorist groups. Forget that the whole idea of it sets back the internationalist movement by at least a hundred years, here's our gal Hill voting to do it again to Iran. Because that's what's at stake and Hill would have had to have been stupid not to realize it. And she's not stupid. Not even one bit.

"Ready to lead from Day One" is the big phrase but lead into what, precisely? How has Hillary led you thus far in the supreme issue of the day, the premptive attack and subsequent sacking and finally clusterfucking of Iraq? Because thus far, her judgement on first the war, then troop withdrawl and then on voting to enable the Bushies to invade Iran next, Hill the Hawk has been wrong, dead wrong, consistently dead wrong, for a long time.

-iSenseChange

p.p. Oprah Winfrey in 2016!!! Or Veep in 08!!!

Sewing Up SuperTuesday: Kennedy Cache Trumps Wild Bill Clinton

2008-02-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

I’ll match your former President with a Kennedy and raise you a few more. Whatchu got now? The Kennedy name is to the democratic party what Shakespeare is to English literature, what Mozart is to music, what Hogan is to pro-wrestling. And Obama just fired a few of ‘em over the bow of the Good Ship Clinton. BOOM! Comparing him to ol’ JF! Whew. That seals it for me. Not one, not two but three Kennedy’s endorse him on the very day of the SOU, including John’s daughter? Most important event in this election thus far, period. Makes what would have been an otherwise utterly meaninglessness SOU to being all about Obama. And the Kennedy name. Hills, you can only imagine, must have absolutely freaked.

It’s still gonna be a tough fight. I don’t think this was the nail in the coffin but a solid endorsement with rousing defense and attack on Obama’s behalf? It’s what us folks in the political blogging non-biz call a real Big Deal. Beyond politics the winds of real change are whispering the name of Obama to the world, at least to those sensitive to such things. I took the monacher SenseChange in early '06 on a now defunct webblogging community called WritingUp, long before I’d ever heard much of what Obama had to say about it because sense change I indeed did. And do.

It was before the Dems had seized back the house (though to little discernable effect at this late date) and there was little hope that Dubya and the neocons wouldn’t find a way to tear the arseletart out of another country in the Middle East for again utterly bogus reasons, with even less hope of the American citizens shaking the Dorito crumbs from their shirts and wheeling their big, fat guts to the corner for even a newspaper box, let alone any kind of meaningful mass protest. I remember discussing with a former stripper the merits of building a chain of nuke-proof OrgyBunkers to booze out the Apocalypse in and let the War Folks tear themselves to shreds, if it became necessary to us, which well seemed possible in those days. "Apocalypse or Renaissance" I predicted to my small but loyal readership that both loved and hated me. Because Change, massive change, I knew and know, is coming and here.

"Who's more ridiculous; people rampaging and killing over a cartoon or a Radical Religious Right that will continuously empower and defend an obviously corrupt and lying President to do anything he wants simply because he claims to be religious? Lines are being divided. World Wars have been fought for less. But fighting others' battles is NOT FOR ME! I, for one, plan on getting Drunk, @#%$ and Laid for the Impending Apocalypse. Why not visit my wildly successful blog to learn more?"

Maybe not so wildly successful in the final analysis but what of it? The good news is that my good friends the Mayans tell me that if America somehow finds it's way clear to defeat a recession by fighting climate change then America and indeed the whole world has a Renaissance under way. You start caring about a planet and then the inevitable byproduct is that you start caring about your fellow human beings, it just is that way and any person of Real Change knows this.

Wild prediction: Gore will endorse Obama between the Florida Primary and SuperTuesday. Gore knows the necessity of Change as much or more than anyone else on the planet and Obama is, far more than Hillary, the candidate of real Change. That childish twit Mathews just called the same damn thing and I’m wishing I got this up in time to beat his prediction. Putting it up, it’s unfinished but screw it. Talk soon, blog hard and enjoy the rest of the race.

Poll
Who Endorses Next and For Whom?

Gore Endorses Obama
53% 75 votes
Pelosi Endorses Clinton
5% 8 votes
Chomsky Endorses Edwards
2% 4 votes
the Baby Jesus Endorses Mike Huckabee
10% 15 votes
Osama Bin Hidin' Reverse Endorses Giuliani ala Dubya in '04
2% 4 votes
Adolph Hitler Rises from the Grave, Endorses Mormon Mitt
2% 3 votes
Another Old Fart Endorses McCain
22% 31 votes

| 140 votes | Results

Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 09:10:27 PM PST

Cookie's Lament: How Green is Coming and Nobody Can Stop It

2008-01-13T16:48:00.000-08:00

Coffee at hand, bagel a’cookin’. Tom Waits singing Downtown Train as I imagine it’s actually our good friend the Cookie Monster singing his heart out to some blue-furred gal who’s captured his heart and for the briefest of moments and for the first time in his life, Ol’ Cook’s turned his whole being from his all-occupying obsession with dessert foods. Yes, that’s a little weird. But good for Cookie, to be thinking rather of nookie, the far better and healthier sugar.

Fuck it, things are happening, the Status Quo is officially uncool. Turns out the honeybee is the new canary in the mineshaft, this based on the inescapable fact that honeybees are disappearing and disappearing drastically in the West. Now, can I say it’s because of Global Warming? I can’t. I don’t know it, not for certain and I’ll tell you why: nobody, anywhere knows for certain why the little fuckers are disappearing but disappear they do anyways. There was an article in the NYTimes and CNN carried it for about three minutes before switching to two full hours of analysis about Britney Lohan driving drunk and Paris Spears chuggin' dick, which is impressive, given how much airtime the 'Most Trusted Name in News' normally gives environmental concerns. Theory I like the best right now is that the huge increase in cell-phone use means the air is far more electromagnetically polluted which fucks with the poor little critter’s homing system, that they never find their queen again and they die alone, their poor little honeybee hearts busted to smithereens.

I know what you’re all saying; "Honeybees are critters and not humans so why give a fuck?" Which is a decent question and I’ll labor to answer it. Turns out in human terms it’s billions of dollars for the honeybees to have fucked off like they did and that’s when we all care about critters for a little while. Because Industry gets fucked by it (to the tune of about 14 billion last year, if I recall properly) and that filters right down to every one of us little cogs/consumers that keep the great and glorious machine a pumpin’ and a belchin.’ Of course honeybees are a part of the complex ecosystem in which we, for all our Greatness and Sagacity, find ourselves right smack dab in the middle of, and any transformation that occurs to said complex ecosystem has RealWorld ramifications to us important Humans.

14 billion dollars lost and that’s just this year. Will the rest of them disappear next year? Don’t know? Take heart. Neither do I or anybody else, Great and Sagacious though we all no doubt be. Some magnate in the honey biz once made the statement that every third bite of food you’ve ever eaten in your life is owed to the honeybee, so chew on that over your morning bagel or cookie as you watch a very close game between the Chargers and the Colts on their way to a soul-crushing defeat at the hand of the perfect Patriots or watch the latest political hack debate the other latest political hack and ask yourself what does it mean?

What it means is that Green is coming and there’s not a damned thing anyone of us can do to stop it. Because when the honeybees start disappearing and it starts costing Big Business some big clink, that’s when we can’t afford to bury our heads in the sand and create false debate where there is none. It means we better pick up our socks, figure out precisely what the fuck is happening and what the fuck we can do about it. Far Right blowhards like to make all these claims about how damaging it would be to the Economy to do anything whatsoever to fight what I’ve taken to calling Human Climate Abuse or even reign in industrial pollution in any way shape or form but the essential irony of it all, that the Honeybees have quietly but firmly proven, is that it is in fact that same Economy that will force us all to respect and save the environment. One hopes it won’t be too late, if it isn’t already.

"Remember the Honeybee!" might be an odd rallying cry but there you have it. Do with it what you will.

Happy Sunday. Go Giants. That is all.

-iSC

Profile of an Edge Blogger

2008-01-13T11:59:00.000-08:00

Fave Quotes:

"A time comes when silence is betrayal."
Martin Luther King on the Vietnam war.

"Fear is for the wrong kinda pussies."
-Manny Duke

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
-George Orwell

"If that's what Fallujah is, then what's that band with all the Mexican kids in it?"
-Aaron Starmer

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal labotomy."
- Rowdy Roddy Piper

"Worldchanging was founded on the idea that real solutions already exist for building the future we want. it's just a matter of grabbing hold and getting moving."
-Worldchanging Manifesto (www.worldchanging.org)

"Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither"
-Benjamin Franklin

"Make the move from me to we."
-the emerging Zeitgeist

"Every android has a blowjob button."
-Chuck U. Farley

"I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators"
-Richard "Dick" Cheney

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
-Sinclair Lewis

"No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."
-H. L. Mencken

Fave Music:

Big Bubbah Tres
Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs
the C Team featuring Shakes LaRue
Evoke
Big Jesus Truck
West Coast Funk Mob
Luxury Steamroller

Fave Television:
SenseChange generally despises television, watches CNN only when feeling cynical already and thinks reality tv is for lemmings.

Fave Movies:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Barfly
the Fog of War
The Big Lebowsky
about four minutes from "Basic Instinct"
Man On Fire
Anchorman
Chugalug Girls #7
Cool Hand Luke
300
Full Metal Jacket
Thankyou for Smoking
Good Will Hunting
Sin City
Outfoxxed
Old School

Fave Books:
Anything by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Anything by Noam Chomsky
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
the Alchemist
"Porno, " by Irvine Welsh
Electric Killer Koolaid Acid Test
On the Road
Celestine Prophecy
"Manfred, " by Lord Byron
"Choke, " by Chuck Pahlaniuk
"Hyperion, " by Keats
Seven Habits of Highly Successful People
'Sailor Song' by Ken Kesey
'the Desiderata' by Max Ehrmann

The Inevitable Failure of Status Quo Capitalism

2008-01-07T17:56:00.000-08:00

Mon Jan 07, 2008 at 05:53:12 PM PST
alternatively entitled "If the planet truly needs saving then you’ll spend accordingly."

Levees fail. Housing bubbles crash. Wars begin over the blood of dead dinosaurs, paid for by the Citizens and future generations of Citizens while making Big Business rich and richer. Meanwhile the earth speedily converts into an ashtray as Big Oil scrambles to create an unresolved debate where there is none, courtesy of Big Media, transforming what's supposed to be an informed citizenry into a society of distracted, terrified and probably sleeping lemmings.

And gibbering chimps get elected as President.

Bush is a perfect symbol of the failure of Capitalism. A bungling moron has been given the keys and it took Big Bucks to get him there. Nothing about him or his past is exemplary in any way, never was he ‘the best’ or even ‘very good at’ anything. With this gibbering chimp we see that Money is not the answer to everything, for it has failed the people of the United States of America and indeed, the entire rest of the world. It’s like when the boss’s idiot nephew who's failed upwards his whole life got hired in to run your company and all you can do is complain about it when the whole shitcan goes up in flames because he's a stuttering fucktard that rewards other stuttering fucktards by failing them upwards as well. And so it goes. And there's so much more...

With Capitalism as it stands the Corporation and their masters have it all, it is the SupraCitizen. How else to explain a time of huge layoffs in an era of record profits? C.E.Os making five hundred million dollars a year? "But it’s the labor!" moans Mr. C.E.O. as he lights a huge illegal Cuban cigar with a smoldering thousand dollar bill, his secretary’s cocaine-covered lips hard at work under his nice mahogany desk, "the labor was bloody killing us! What’re you gonna do?!?"

What indeed.

Establishment Science says the levvies were in danger of busting and bust they did, without asking anybody’s permission. Establishment Science said these bridges were gonna go too and go they are, without even a courtesy call. Establishment Science has also warned of a host of bad things that are going to happen due to Human Climate Abuse and happen they will, to tragedies of a scale never before seen by human eye, if for no other reason than that there’s so many of us now and we’ve built so many glorious and shiny new things and we so desperately need them, no matter what the cost to anybody or thing else.

The "Invisible Hand of the Marketplace" being the high law of the land is hideously flawed in its conception, for what should be a very obvious reason: it takes time for the Hand (so, you, me, and EVERYBODY ELSE as mass consumers of SupraCitizen products and services) to react in said marketplace. Infrastructure is ignored until something catastrophic occurs.
(see also; Health and Safety,
see also; Security,
see also; Poverty,
see also; Education,
see also; Society,
see also; Civilisation,
see also; the Human Race)

Chaos and disaster ensues and the Invisible Hand reacts, but only after the catastrophic event and even then, not very efficiently or speedily. Why? Because Big Media has transformed the Citizenry into uniformed lemmings as I believe I've mentioned before once or thrice.

Describe yourself as a believer in the Invisible Hand of the Free market? Get used to catastrophe and quit whining about it. Just don't be surprised when that poor kid clinging to a rooftop with a makeshift help sign might just turn out to be you. Or yours. Because the Free Market,(reliant on chaos, tragedy and failure as it is) isn't saving anybody. And it never will, it will only react and slowly at that.

But hey, shit, keep spending, Citizens! Your life might just depend on it! Maybe even the whole planet!

Zeitgeistal Uplink

2008-01-05T19:17:00.000-08:00

Sat Dec 22, 2007 at 05:26:08 PM PST

America most needs a Kucinich, would be lucky to get an Edwards, will most likely get an Obama and hopefully not a Clinton.

Forget Polls and Electability: Which Candidate Would be the Best President?

a) Dennis Kucinich because he's got the best voting record by far and is the closest answer to what America really needs.
29% 15 votes

b) Bill Richardson, because he's, well...I confess, I know very little about this man. Seems like a nice guy.
0% 0 votes

c) Chris Dodd, who just showed his whole party how to stand up and fight and face down the Far Right nutters.
15% 8 votes

d) Joe Biden, who actually knows a little about the world outside the Great American Bubble. And he's actually a pretty solid dude with excellent leadership experience
1% 1 votes

e) John Edwards who is dead-on, ball's accurate on Poverty, Health Care and Corporate Greed.
23% 12 votes

f) Barrack Obama because he can heal the Great American Divide and is, any way you slice it, an agent of Change
11% 6 votes

g) Hillary Clinton because she has experience, her husband is Bill and she's one smart cookie any way you slice it. And smart is vastly preferable to what was elected last time.
13% 7 votes

h) Mike Gravel because he's MAD AS HELL AND NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!
3% 2 votes

Tony Snow and the War on Santa God

2008-01-05T19:10:00.000-08:00

Tue Dec 18, 2007 at 09:38:07 AM PST

REPORTER: "Do we know whose behind this new "War on God," I mean, do we just naturally assume it's Satan? Is Hell involved or is it just Americans?"

SNOW: "Is Hell overtly involved? Tough to say. My good buddy Bill O'Really asserts that DailyKos readers worship Satan. Is that the case? I'm sure in some instances, yes, absolutely, just as Hell and the Devil can probably be found in things like the ACLU or impeachment investigations or Congress or people that read books by Noam Chomsky. Next question?"

REPORTER: "Given that America's War on Drugs, Terror and specifically Afghanistan and Iraq have each been such epic failures, what makes us think we're ready to take on God? Or even Hell? Or...whomever. Who are we fighting again?"

SNOW: "Secular fascists."

REPORTER: "So, technically, each other?"

SNOW: "Exactly."

SNOW: "But let me hone that in a little for you. We're at war with the evil secularists amongst us, just like we were at war with the terrorist sympathizers as recently as just yesterday and just like we were at war with communist sympathizers a few decades ago. It's not uncommon for America to be at war against it's own citizens. It's actually a proud part of our national heritage!"

REPORTER: "But given the already serious divsions that exist within America today, probably the most divided American citizenry in history, do we need something else to divide ourselves over? I mean, a good chunk of us don't believe there even is a God, so how can we be at war with him? Or...Him."

SNOW: "We're not at war with 'Him'. We're at war with 'them.'"

REPORTER: "Whom?"

SNOW: "The evil secularists."

REPORTER: "Then why isn't it the 'War on Secularism' or 'Secular Fascism?' Is it because the war is more marketable if it's against capital-G God as opposed to a system of government in which the ruling class keep their religion to themselves? And are we at war with Atheists as well?"

SNOW: "Not at all. Just the Secular Atheists."

REPORTER: "Jesus."

SNOW: "Exactly. Next question?"

REPORTER: "What do you make of DKos blogger and eminent sage iSenseChange's assertion that this whole "War on God" nonsense (his words, not mine, amen hallelujah) is just the Republican Party's pathetic attempt at hedging it's bets going into the 08 elections, that the creation of a patently ridiculous "War on God" is laughable on its face and a very simple attempt at dividing the electorate while not dealing with a single issue of importance, like say, health care reform, the Iraq War or the impending recession? After seven years of George 'Dubya' Bush fucking up everything he's ever laid eyes on, is religion basically all you guys have left at this point? Are you that desperate?"

SNOW: "This iSenseChange is both a DailyKos blogger and an Atheist? Sounds like we've found our new Osama. He's a blogger. Is he an American? We have no way of knowing. He might even be a Muslim."

REPORTER: "Well, actually he's an avowed Atheist. so..."

SNOW: "So he might even be an Islamo-Atheo-Fascist-Extremist. That's the worst kind."

REPORTER: "Sounds scary as hell! Let's hope we find this guy!"

SNOW: "We'll smoke him out. Next question? Mr. Gannon?"

GANNON: "Given the nature of America's brand new war, which of the presidential contenders would be best suited to lead America in these, the darkest of times? Do any of them have a theology degree? Any decent speeches about this war recently?"

READER'S POLL
What war would be preferable to one on God?

a) the War on Homelessness
9% 4 votes

b) the War on Corporate Greed
15% 7 votes

c) the War on Presidential Criminality
18% 8 votes

d) the War on Environmental Destruction
6% 3 votes

e)the War on the Dumbing Down of the American Citizenry
50% 22 votes

The Republican Candidates are the Most Unelectable Gang of Freaks in American History

2008-01-05T19:03:00.000-08:00

Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 09:24:48 AM PST
Alternatively, "Why McCain Can Win It."

So if nobody’s talking about Iraq, is McCain electable? Because if it’s not him, who the hell is it? I know Huck’s in the lead right now but how long can it last? I’ve never seen a candidate more primed for self-implosion than Mike Huckabee. He got a bump in the polls and thought it was Divine providence. I refuse to believe a majority of Republicans are that involved in magical thinking. I’ve talked to some of these folks (true story!) and as much as it is a party for the Religio-nutjobs, this is also the party of the CEOs, Big Business and Power. They hate taxes, the poor and probably Black people and tolerate the otherwise intolerable religious wing because it keeps them in power and because they’re so ridiculously easy to control. The ascendancy of former cokehead and frat boy, George ‘Dubya’ Bush, is proof positive of that.

Guliani’s got a raft of scandals behind him, Mitt’s a Mormon (do you actually believe you become a god and get a planet named after you when you die? Isn’t that just as fair a question as whether Kucinich thinks he saw a UFO or not? Discuss), the Creationist preacher almost has to self-destruct and the possibly sleeping actor has yet to impress a single person, anywhere, of anything. McCain’s tied hand and foot to Iraq but nobody talks about Iraq, right? It’s like the new, Neo-Reagan Law of the Republican Party: Republicans shalt not speak of ongoing, horrendous Republican fuck-ups. Which means any dialogue on Iraq is a no-no and George Dubya Bush is the new Voldemort.

What about Ron Paul? I don’t think he could win either. Why? He speaks the Truth on foreign policy. Republicans hate the Truth. Obscure it whenever they can. They figure (and rightfully so) that the population at large would never go along with half of the cockamamie schemes that have kept America afloat as long as it has, that the tyranny of the majority can only hurt the Glory of the Status Quo. If amalgamated into a single person they would be Jack Nicholson in "a Few Good Men," and most people, it turns out, really couldn’t handle the Truth.

I like to think Paul could win (though he’s medieval on Abortion and appalling on a host of other things) because that would mean that even the Right Wing has finally learned the lesson it has steadfastedly refused to even consider: that America’s Foreign Policy is not only one of it’s biggest problems but one of the entire world’s biggest problems and has been for decades. The omni-fractured Middle East alone is testament enough of that but it has never before been enough for the Right wing, who’re perfectly happy to blame it all on the desert rats. Or the French. And sometimes the Jews. Nope, if anything it’s the Republicans that can’t handle the Truth and that’s why Paul’s most likely doomed. But hey, prove me wrong, you know? Absolutely love to see it.

No, I keep going back to McCain. Every day Giuliani free-falls (and I don’t see how he can pull out of it, I think there’s a treasure-trove of scandal yet to gurgle forward from the ooze of this creature’s stay as the mayor of Nine Eleven) may go along way towards furthering McCain as the NeoCon favorite, which still has a hideous amount of power in American politics, government and with, of course, Big Oil. Which also means a good cash infusion if they think he’s the horse that should win.

But McCain though? Do I even think that? How could he possibly go on to defeat any single candidate on the Left? In spite of the fact that nothing significant has happened since then, the American people sent a loud and clear message to the political fiefdom in 2006: we don’t like losing. Get us out. Now. Course, they didn’t do what they were told by their supposed bosses but they certainly got the message.

All of which means I find myself in the very unlikely position of placing my bets on John McCain to win the Republican Nomination. I know. It’s ridiculous. I sound like an idiot. I don’t even like saying it. But the Creationist is gonna implode, Giuliani's might just be the biggest scandal magnet in history and Mitt Romney failed to reduce what I like to call the "Otheriness of Mormonism in America" with his Bizarro world version of the JFK speech.

And somebody’s just gotta win this thing. Bloody weird is what it is. Make no mistake about it, this is shaping up to be the weirdest race in political history. And just wait til the Independents announce.

READER'S POLL
Which trait will sink which candidate?

a) Giuliani's well established abuse of public funds while mayor of NYC
51% 23 votes

b) Romney's "Mormon problem"
22% 10 votes

c) Huck's creationism

d) McCain's attachment to the incumbent's ideas and policies
20% 9 votes

Dana Perino: Hotness on the Hot Seat

2008-01-05T18:58:00.000-08:00

Thu Dec 06, 2007 at 11:13:14 PM PST

JOHN: Miss Perino, what do you make of eminent dKos blogger iSenseChange’s statement that this latest scandal is incontrovertible evidence that President Bush is a lying, evil and insane bastard and should be the subject of an impeachment investigation?

"What am I gonna tell them this time? I mean, I’m good, I know I’m good but this one...Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Knew this was gonna happen! Knew it. They think the NIE was just gonna disappear or something? Idiots. Goddamn Cheney!"

"Fuck it. I’m hot. Bring it on you sissies. Hah!"

DANA:(offers a very pitying smile) Look, the President has been very clear, if you can understand as I do how he speaks and you should know better than to ask such a question, John. I would expect something like this from iSenseChange but not you. C’mon.

JOHN:(full of genuine shame)I know, I’m sorry Dana. Still, it’s not just iSenseChange, it’s, well...everybody! Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan want an investigation into who knew what and when. Scarborough and Buchanan!

DANA: You’re going to tell me that a ‘journalist" in the Leftist and possibly Communist MSNBC wants an investigation of a Republican president? Big surprise.

JOHN: Hey, I’m from the MSNBC!

DANA: And there you have it. Next question?

JOHN: Buchanan though? He said that what you guys are trying to pull is "non-credible" today and that he thinks they oughta subpoena Condie and Hadley and Gates and Negroponte and basically whoever else they can get their mitts on.

DANA: Yeah, well, how’s the whole congressional subpoena process been working so far?

JOHN: Touche, but –

DANA: How about the whole investigation process, what’s that been doing for you lately, anything at all?

JOHN: Touche again but don’t you think that if you guys have lost credibility with Patty Buchanan and ‘Stupid and Proud of It’ cheerleader Joey Scarborough then pretty much nobody, anywhere believes what you yourself are saying even right this very second?

DANA: Yeah, that’s a tough one. Attack the messenger, attack the messenger...Pat Buchanan’s getting older. Joey Scarborough’s been a communist for most of his life. And the President has never actually lied to anybody since he ditched the coke and found God. Think about it.

JOHN: Errrrr...okay...? Think about what?

DANA: Think about your next question? Before you ask it. Next question?

JOHN: A follow-up question, if I could-

DANA: (audible impatient sigh): Whatever. Jesus wept!

JOHN: The other assertion this iSenseChange made is that if Dubya-

DANA: (a deeply disapproving frown and a look that would melt steel) Dubya?

JOHN: Georgie! George!

DANA: The President.

JOHN: (full of shame) Sorry. But the other assertion iSenseChange makes is that in the extremely unlikely and nearly impossible event that Dub- the President is telling the truth and that he didn’t know the thrust of the NIE until just the other day (which we all agree is impossible, but for the sake of argument we'll call it nearly impossible) then wouldn’t he be so bad at his job, the worst ever (like he wasn’t already), that he would have to be impeached anyways? Just for simple derelection of duty, let’s say? To whit: lying dick or grotesquely incompetent and possibly retarded, doesn’t matter, the President should be impeached either way?

Dana: May I remind you this is a time of War? Congratulations, you just emboldened Al-Queda in Iraq. Kill troops much?

John: I thought things were going swimmingly in Iraq?

Dana: They are. Thanks for asking. Next question?

READER's POLL:

Dana Perino is

a) in possession of a soul in mortal jeopardy
10% 8 votes

b) competently enabling the biggest criminals in history
22% 18 votes

c) a Nazi uberwoman. BOW DOWN!
18% 15 votes

d) spinning so fast she may just disappear
41% 33 votes

e) possibly falling in love with esteemed DailyKos blogger and eminent sage, iSenseChange
7% 6 votes

|

Dubya, World War III and the Damning NIE

2008-01-05T18:50:00.000-08:00

Well, there it is. Keep impeachment off the table and the neocons will inevitably try to spin their way into Iran, not having finished their Iraq or Afghanistans. Well, there's nothing really surprising here, it's simple Cause and Effect and you really can't blame them for trying to trigger World War Three. Might as well blame the scorpion for hiding in your shoe. It's in their nature.

Why not build another phony case for invading Iran or indeed anybody else? Dems have rumbled impotently about pulling out some troops, some time or other with little discernable effect on the President, his policies and wildly aberrant behavior. The American people have not yet shaken the Dorito crumbs off their collective chest, poured themselves out of the couch, switched off the inanely chattering omnipresent boob-tube and actually got pissed off in a way anybody would notice, (like, say during Vietnam?). So if you’re a bloodthirsty, chicken-hawk neocon you gotta be saying ‘why not Iran’? I mean, fuck it, right? It’s the ultimate double down and these cats don’t mind betting the house when it certainly is not now nor has ever been their blood and guts on the line. Not to mention all their Rich Friends just keep getting richer throughout the whole debacle which everybody knows and has still done nothing about.

I never believed that if or when Iran gets the bomb like so many of it’s neighbors have already done, they’re gonna use it on the vastly more powerful Israeli-American axis/alliance (again, call it whatever you like, just acknowledge it exists). It would be a very obvious act of suicide. To which, I’m certain, many of the Rabid Right would say, "well, so what? Are they not a nation of Suicide bombers?" Well, no, actually, not a nation of them. A Nation employs it’s suicide bombers the way the West employs it’s ground troops: only the poor need apply. The Rich, on either side of the ideological divide, almost always have "other priorities." So, Akmaniwhatshisnuts ain’t gonna sacrifice his own skin or that of those that put him in power. Which means he’s actually have to be nuts to fire them at Israel, even if he had the power to do so which he doesn’t.

But bomb away! Seriously, can't blame them. Impeach? Yes. Blame? No. It's not their fault and Jefferson would agree. Jefferson and the fellas knew there'd be greedy evil bastards looking to warp America and its people for their own sick purposes. What the whole American experiment rests on is an informed citizenry to hold these people to account. That job not done, that's who you blame, and it's really that simple.

Make your choice:
Bush invoked WWIII and another pre-emptive strike in spite of the NIE because...

a) He most likely doesn't know what an NIE is and should therefore be impeached for stupidity
15% 7 votes

b) He had only been told about the NIE about a week ago and should therefore be impeached for incompetence
2% 1 votes

c) he figured he'd just spin it when it came out anyways and should be impeached for being a lying bastard. Again.
68% 30 votes

d) the NIE is wrong, Bush is right and will be right in all things forever. FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS!!!
13% 6 votes

Mormon Mitt's Defining Moment

2007-12-04T15:31:00.000-08:00

Mon Dec 03, 2007 at 09:15:45 PM PST

Romney will get the plasticky android vote but the nomination? Only if he can give one hell of a speech on what the talking heads have taken to calling his "Mormon Problem," which is funny enough all on its own.

Mitt's initially attempted to make his "Mormon Problem" a non-issue with the master stroke of claiming he'd like to talk about it but he's not allowed:

"Is there going to be a special speech? Perhaps, at some point. I sort of like the idea myself. The political advisers tell me no, no, no — it's not a good idea. It draws too much attention to that issue alone."

It was a positively brilliant distraction: we all end up thinking that he's just an idiot that can't think for himself and is too stupid to cover this potentially damaging fact up rather than a Mormon that is...well...a Mormon. Look, stupiding your way to the president worked just fine for George 'Dubya' Bush not once but twice and Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi is on the record as suspecting the same strategy hard at work for Fred Thompson. Well, sort of hard at work. At work. Point is, post Dubya, stupid is the new smart in American politics, so why shouldn’t Mitt jump onboard as well?

All for naught, it seems his advisors now tell him he is indeed allowed to talk openly about his Mormon problem, for which we all await with baited breath and which the media has already dubbed Romney’s ‘JFK speech’ (offend anybody? No? Moving on...). This in reference to Kennedy’s very successful pitch to the masses in 1960, the major difference being that Mitt wouldn’t dream of saying he’d keep his Faith seperate from his job but rather that his Faith is just as pro God, pro Bible, pro Jesus, pro-Torturing-and-Nuking as yours is and a mighty Amen to all that.

Can he pull it off? Dunno. Tough row to hoe. Many feel he'd have better luck being elected as an Atheist than a Mormon. A Mormon? Multiple wives? This is America. Might as well start marrying the livestock. Blacks not having souls until the late sixties? Might not be a big deal with the Far Right who evidently still doubt they have souls in 2007 but these are the kind of things that can come back and haunt a would-be presidential contender that needs to win more than just the Big Business and Bible Belt vote. Secret, fireproof underwear? Sounds like James Bond stuff to me and I'm all for it. Seems like a good idea for just about anybody, let alone a presidential candidate, so maybe it's a good place for him to start.

His all knowing handlers have claimed Mitt’s speech is "not going to be a lesson in Mormon doctrine" but rather "an open discussion of how important and critical faith has been and is in Romney’s life" and "how faith is what shapes our values.."

And if that’s the case, Mitt’s sunk and his advisors are punks. People don’t really want a good sermon but if they did, Huckabee’s got that market cornered like no candidate in history. (Did you know he’s the only running candidate with a theology degree???? Bet yer ass! Talk about qualified!) Yessiree, Mike Huckabee, who asserts that he doesn’t even think we’re primates, which is funny and weird all at the same time, has the religio-chops to sermonize rings around any and all comers, Romney obviously included, which would be great if he were running for Pope, scary and extremely backwards since Huck’s running for President of the United States. Nonetheless here we all are.

Nope, Mitt’s gotta make the case for not just a religious president but a Mormon one or he’s dead in the water and to do so he’s gotta shed light on the ‘Otherness’ that clings to him like a wet fart and has from the start. That means (at the very least) confronting the multi-wife thing (only weird Mormons, a minority of what we like to call the ‘Other Mormons’ do that sort of thing and I am certainly not one of those), the no souls for black folks until the late sixties thing (yeah, well, somebody had a revelation, okay? Old Testament meets New Testament, okay? You either believe in revelations or you don’t, okay? Okay?!?) and the fireproof secret undie thing (Steve Young wore secret Mormon fireproof underpants while quarterbacking the Niners through how many championship seasons? How many Superbowl rings did your underwear ever get you? None? Boom! Done! Mormon’s fuckin' RULE!!!).

He takes these issues head-on and in the manner I’ve laid out then he has a chance against the possibly sleeping actor, the creationist preacher, the confused war vet and the transvestite. Anything less and he’s officially an also-ran.

Truth Decay: Deconstructing Rove

2007-12-04T15:28:00.000-08:00

Sun Dec 02, 2007 at 11:30:38 PM PST

To many, including former Whitehouse chief of staff Andy Card, Karl Rove's latest blossom was laughable on it's very face. The ineffectual, kowtowing Democrats were somehow responsible for anything at all to do with the run-up to the Iraq War? Yes, it’s ridiculous. Yes, it is entirely unassociated with what actually happened. Shake your head and laugh at him if you like. I don't laugh. Betcha Orwell wouldn’t either. It's not funny.

Karl Rove is not ‘the National Enquirer’. He’s the man that got George ‘Dubya’ Bush elected, not once but twice. Everything the man does is strategy. It's who he is. So why lay out the stinkin'est most obvious of laughable lies for all and sundry?

You and I may never forget who started this thing, when and why they started it but none of us can expect the same from our brothers and sisters. Or the people we work with? And that gaggle of folks that hang out around the watercooler and yammer daily about the latest American Idol winner? They’ve already forgotten much and are looking to forget yet more. Rove is never, ever afraid to underestimate the intelligence, the memory or the attention span of the common man. On that, and that alone, he and I are in full agreement.

Where Dubya’s legacy will always be the Iraq war, Rove’s will always be the permanent Republican 50% + 1 majority. As always, for this to be the case you and your fellow Citizens must remain angier at your polar opposites, (be they Far Right Religio-Nutjob or Bullgoose Loonie Lefty) than your ineffectual government or your powergrabbing leader. It’s worked swimmingly so far, why on earth should he stop now?

Create the mere perception of a debate on even the most obvious of Truths and soon both wings will happily fight it out for you, creating (or in this case, perpetuating) the most fertile of grounds for the schemer of schemers: an environment in which there is a lot of anger, a lot of confusion and no objective Truth. No objective Truth means maybe the Democrats did push America into the Iraq War, maybe Saddam did have WMDs, maybe Saddam did have connections with Osama, maybe it actually is okay to wipe one's arse with the Constitution and maybe there actually is no such thing as an objective Right or Wrong. That America even now debates the legitimacy of torture is proof enough of the success of this strategy in the last few years. This is to be expected in a society turning ever closer to Fascism. Orwell, if he was that type of guy, would say "I told you."

The grim thought I’ll wrestle with whilst trying to sleep: each and every time we rally at the next Repubbie (be they Senator, Governor, Talking Head or the guy next door) that inevitably repeats this most obvious of lies, Rove chuckles deeply to himself and rubs his porky hands together with sick glee, and why not. We’re doing all he could ever ask of us. And we’re powerless to do otherwise.

Genius.

Frontrunner Nothing: Why Hills and Gules Won't Win

2007-12-04T15:24:00.000-08:00

Tue Nov 27, 2007 at 12:12:29 PM PST

Media coverage to the contrary I never bought for even ten seconds that Hillary Clinton is going to be the next President. She's not even the next Democratic contender. Too far Right of the Zeitgeist is my sense of it. People want out of Iraq and they don't want to go to Iran and Hills bolloxed it up badly when she voted to name the Iranian Whoozitswhatzits as a terrorist organization, knowingly opening the door for Retarded George to have one more vicious, failing stab at a Middle East Apocalypse during his mad reign. It's her biggest mistake yet. She can't blow it off, she just voted for it. Edwards called it 'a neocon dream' and scored huge points for that one sentence and rightfully so.

Media coverage to the contrary I never bought for even ten seconds that Hillary Clinton is going to be the next President. She's not even the next Democratic contender. Too far Right of the Zeitgeist is my sense of it. People want out of Iraq and they don't want to go to Iran and Hills bolloxed it up badly when she voted to name the Iranian Whoozitswhatzits as a terrorist organization, knowingly opening the door for Retarded George to have one more vicious, failing stab at a Middle East Apocalypse during his mad reign. It's her biggest mistake yet. She can't blow it off, she just voted for it. Edwards called it 'a neocon dream' and scored huge points for that one sentence and rightfully so.

Hills is the Republican-lite candidate, has her eyes on gaining the middle ground in the general election when she hasn’t won the first battle amongst her fellow Democrats. Edwards can go far by continuing to demonstrate how deeply cozy Hills is with the Big Business establishment and the status quo and should beat her like a drum daily for her vote on the Iran deal, all of which will benefit Barrack Obama more than anybody else.

As for the other media generated, Big Business champion/frontrunner, Guiliani toes the Bush-line without reservation and, in a sane world, should be utterly doomed for that and that alone. What it actually means is that Rudy 'Always 911' Guliani enjoys full neoconservative support, materials, funding, department of dirty tricks, timely governmental threat alerts, prob'ly Rove and the gargantuan weight of the Far Right, Fight-to-the-Death Cult. Having said all that, I just don’t believe anybody can win the Republican nomination if he’s been photographed wearing a dress on at least seven different occasions, which Gules most certainly has.

Vegas odds have it an even bet that should this man ever get elected he’ll get caught smooching an expensive portrait of John F. Kennedy while dressed up like Marilyn Monroe and singing "I Feel Pretty" inside of three weeks in the White House.

the Ongoing Media Hackjobbery on Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore

2007-12-04T15:20:00.000-08:00

Tue Oct 16, 2007 at 09:52:28 AM PST

As of 12:30 last Saturday morning I watched a typically beautiful but vacuous CNN commentator casually bring up recent Nobel Prize winner Al Gore "inventing the internet" again, to chuckles all around. In 2007, that "the Most Trusted Name in News" CNN is repeating these well established falsehoods (the latest Vanity Fair covers the whole odious enterprise quite succinctly) goes a long way towards explaining just how terrified of this man Big Business really is and how far they’ll go to try to stick it to him again.

Forget FoxNews, everyone knows they’re propaganda fiends and utterly full of shit but an alarming amount of people still trust supposed Leftist (but actually centrist) outlets like CNN or the NYTimes, either of whom have no problem toeing the party line when push comes to shove and both of whom pulled as much of a hatchet-job on Gore in 2000 as anybody else. Hopefully it goes without saying that they will of course do so again given half the chance. Or else they’ll try to convince him, and you, and everybody else, that Gore doesn’t need to run, that he has nothing to prove or that he will only hurt his cause of increasing awareness of Global Warming. All of which is, of course, utter horseshit on the face of it but that’s the script as I perceive it for this week in the MainStreamMedia. All of which means you and yours have work to do. Especially when (not if) he actually does announce he’s running.

There were many excuses for the Media to claim and repeat ad infinitum falsehoods about (not by) Gore in 2000, the result of which being nothing less than the Gore/Bush vote being as close as it was, making the vicious power seizure by Bush Sr. via his buddies on the Supreme Court even possible. Blame the media or ‘Fourth Estate’ as much or more than anybody for the mess in Iraq, the total evisceration of your Constitution and the Murderous Run of the NeoCons. And be pissed about it, would you? Know why? Because they’re still doing it. As recently as 12:30 last Saturday morning.

It’s abundantly clear: the jackals and greedheads also know he’s going to run and think they’ve got all their artillery all lined up, same as last time. Do they though? Hasn’t the battlefield changed at least a little? They think the ways of the old are going to work in the Now and it won’t, and I don’t even have to tell Gore fans, of all people, cuz you know it better than anybody: It’s a brand new world. It’s a "YouTubeMySpaceFaceBookWikiBlogWorlde" and in it, for a change, people are actually being held accountable. Politicians are seeing their own fithy lies come back and smack them in the face, for the whole www to see. Media hackjobbers like O'Reilley and the rest of his demogoblins are having all their lies repeated, deconstructed and disproven on sites like the DKos or crooksandliars.com seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 a year. And the whole world is really watching now. Everybody has their digi-cams and their laptops and their websites and their blogs and I just have to believe your folks’ll fight for him. For it. For us? Organizations like yours have to be the first line of defense against dark Repubbie and yes, even Democrat dirty play. Why should Al, ever again, have to dirty his hands with this muck when it gives the common folk such raw pleasure exposing these lying whores (and for this I apologize to actual whores everywhere) for what they are.

And it’s not just about writing letters to people and getting their support for Gore, it’s about writing letters to CNN and asking them not to rebroadcast proven falsehoods generated by the sick and depraved Right Wing or else losing the not insignificant viewership groups like yours represent. See where I’m going with this?

Let’s face it, I’m not an American. It’s not my fight. It’s just so totally and uniquely yours. It’s up to you guys to make this thing happen. Fact is, never before in human history has one single society’s decisions and choices meant so much to so many. The world. Save the planet or keep burning it, that’s the choice that Gore brings to the table and the interesting part is that so many people already know this. Even the people who hate his guts know he runs for something much larger and more important than an office.

Love him or hate him every man-jack out there knows he represents not only a change but a dramatic departure from the status quo, a vast and interdependent effort to be made not only by every American but every citizen of the First World. He’s become a living symbol of the dedication to the kind of large-scale, interdependent, international action required to save the earth, action that America can lead, genuinely lead and the world would follow. Maybe not right away but when one of the very biggest polluters on earth lays down that kind of example how can my own country, no small polluter in its own right, not follow?

Your People have to understand that this next election is the deal breaker. You and Al gotta package the thing like it’s never been packaged before. The Choice of the Greatest Generation of Americans. Cuz you know what? It actually is precisely that, should you decide to make it that. Make yours the generation that decides how they want to live and how they want to treat the world and the earth and everything else and not only that but how they want to be treated! How they want their votes counted, how they want their bridges, levees and infrastructure maintained, how they want their governments to interact with other governments and Nations. Ultimately, this generation, if and only if it gets its shit together, might just get to kick-start a Renaissance and who knows, maybe it takes nothing less than that to save America. And everything else.

The good news? Such things have happened on this earth before and will undoubtedly happen again. The point is that never before has there been this absolutely breathtaking opportunity for an entire populace to knowingly decide upon and seize a Renaissance. And the rest of the world will follow, I promise you.

I know, it asks a lot from a buncha tv-heads (and that’s no slight against you, believe me, a comparable percentage of my own countrymen are actively lobotomizing themselves with Reality TV, meaningless sitcom shlock and the like), but it all comes down to how the next election is framed and cutting through the window dressing, the background noise and the omnipresent bullshit. Fortunately in Al Gore you have one of the more articulate, gifted and intelligent men to ever run for president.

Look at it this way, you do it, you get him elected and you’ve forced your country to try to lead the fight to save the planet. How relevant does that make your particular generation of Americans? How epic is this choice? Sounds like one of your BLOCKBUSTER movies, doesn’t it? "In a world gone mad, one man..." Okay, you write it. Act it out. Do it. Are you doing it? Well, here’s the thing: you’ve already done a lot but you’ll need to do much more.

Good luck on it, we’re all going be hoping for you, and, between hockey games, watching and cheering for you.

-iSenseChange

p.p. I believe in you. Now get off your asses.

RandomMP3age: "Sex and Candy" by Marcy Playground

Iran Just Made America Look Like a Buncha Dicks

2007-04-16T11:56:00.000-07:00

Say what you like about Iran, at least they gave them soldiers back to their country and families. If it were Iranians captured anywhere even close to american waters is there any doubt they would already have been tortued extensively by now? No doubt whatsoever and I defy anybody to refute it. You can't. You all know that's what goes on now, that America tortures, no matter what GWB and Darth Cheney say out of both sides of their mouths.

Ugly times when Iran has the moral highground over the good ol' US of A but hey, shit, welcome to the PNAC America!

-iSC

Scandal Made Easy: the Gonzales Attorney Firings

2007-04-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

Deal is these cats do indeed serve at the President's pleasure and he can fire them anytime he likes and for whatever reason. So long as he's not breaking any laws. How can he break a law in firing them? If it can be demonstrated that these attorneys are being fired to halt federal investigations into criminal enterprises. That's not only a crime but a Federal Crime if my reading of it is accurate, and it's called multiple counts of "Obstruction of Justice."

Whom was investigating whom when these attorneys got their pink slips? If you can figure that out you've got all you need...

THIS HANDLE ON THE SCANDAL BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE GOOD FOLKS AT THE SENSECHANGE CENTER FOR POSITIVE CHANGE. THANKS, AND HAVE A GREAT DAY.

More Kidnapped Troops and Other Reasons to Launch the Apocalypse

2007-04-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

You voted him in twice. I wouldn’t even trust him with the keys to my car. And now he’s gonna, what would you say…demo Iran? Whew. The Brits start fishing their sailors around Iranian waters providing that invented aggressor that this administration needs to get it’s last piece of the puzzle, that final kick at the can: Iran! Man! They’re gonna play the Iran card. If not now, when? To not would show immense restraint where before there’s always been absolutely none at all. This is genius. Is Rove on this? I feel in my heart its Cheney. It’s just his type of dastardly, utterly wreckless plan to keep the mad, PNAC, Neo-Con Nutter drive alive: Congress gonna subpoena this or investigate that or impeach what?!? Guess what, motherfuckers? We’re at war with Iran! That’s right! We’re goin’ in! What are you gonna do about it?!? Nothin.’ HAH!!! I’ll take my money now. George ‘Dubya’ Bush is fuckin’ ballsy, I’ll give him that. Crazier than a shithouse rat but pretty fuckin’ ballsy. It’d be admirable if you didn’t absolutely know that he’s a huge fuckup, maybe the biggest in history. Either that or he’s Kaiser Sose and at this point in time things are too fucked up for anybody to make any kind of meaningful guess. Still oscillating at this late date. Utterly insane whichever end of the scale you take.

If we look at this from an Axis vs Allies scenario it clarifies. In times of war the actions of your ally are your own, if you’re any kind of a team at all. Subtlety of a flying mallet, fer fock’s sake. Eh?!? And the UK knows it won’t have to do any of the heavy lifting for this one, if ever again. They don’t even have to get involved beyond lighting the fuse of the damned enterpise. Maybe they’ll take charge of the aftermath and it’ll actually all work out in some crazy way. The Brits clean up whatever mess the US makes in the perfect servile relationship and why not? They’ll be the perfect butlers. They already have the accents. A gold star for you, friend, in your brand New American Century! Where the Rich Get Richer and the Poor go to Prison!

Weird times, many things happening at the same time, so much, so fast. What’s it all mean? Was gonna write this one out of character. Might be impossible now, but what an odd thought. Out of character? What possible impulse? It’s been well established by now that Gonzo is the only way to cover these, the weirdest of times. Yes sir, HST had his finger to the pulse when he fathered this vein of political reporting. Because when Lies and Deceit are universal and the Change is coming on fast and hard, your writing has to be as mercurial as the times or you’re already two steps behind, which is one step away from useless! You gotta be outta yer mind to really have your finger on the pulse of what’s comin’ next because what’s comin’ next might well be out of anybody’s mind. The inmates are running the asylum, they have been for a long time and it turns out this isn’t really an efficient way to to run things. No, Gonzo’s the way to write it, that’s the only certainty in the whole thing maybe, so that hasn’t changed. But what has? Is it her? You?

With so much going on some stuff slips by the filters as your paying more attention to some stories, trying to see how this thing is gonna play out. It’s all about Congress versus President right now, so that’s what your watching and waiting for, some hint about how that scene’ll play out and in the midst of all that you don’t have the focus for the ‘Iran/Uk hostage’ deal. So maybe you don’t see it right away, even after the ridiculously obvious pre-kidnap interview with the single-mother soldier just days before she was taken. How many soldiers in the UK and they just happen to interview one of the hostages days before the kidnapping and she’s a plucky single mom trying to give her child a better life? So, it’s like, you see it happening, right in front of you but you don’t even recognize it as it happens, it looks like something else, even though you’ve been calling for something exactly like this for months now (Yeah. And I saw it. I said the US was gonna do explicitly that on Februrary 12 in a little ditty I wrote that I like to call:NeoCon Versus Nazi: Next Stop Iran! None of which makes me necessarily politically adept or anything, lots of people saw precisely this coming, it just means that I’m catching the obvious ones. Which is more than we can say for the mainstream media, right everybody? Right, Sense). Embarrassing that Rosie McDonald or whatever her name is beat you to the punch on that one, Sensey, oh shit, nailing it for what it is. You’re getting soft, dude. First time I’ve ever found her even remotely interesting. And hey, shit, dissent has found the mainstream! It’s about bloody time!

Not that that’ll stop anything at this point. We all know Bush’s been chompin’ at the bit for this. We all know Cheney’s been foaming at the mouth for this. Everybody’s been crafting plans, everybody’s been shaking fingers, everybody’s been prepared for that all-important reason which turns out to be any reason at all to turn the largest arsenal on earth onto oil-rich Iran and give it a good boot-fucking. You hit Afghanistan, you hit Iraq but you leave the piece in the middle? Are you kidding me? What on earth for?

Who knows. Maybe they’ve learnt something from Iraq but you know what? I doubt it. Don’t think this crew is about learning at all. Betcha George Bush still watches four hours a day of old baseball games.

Right! That’s all for now, Citizens. Keep your eyes on the skies. Time has never been better for a little distraction. Or a big one.

-iSenseChange

NonRandomMP3age: "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode

Scandal Made Easy: Walter Reed

2007-04-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

You want to find out who’s responsible you have to look at what got put into the budget for soldier care. Next to nothing? Thanks, Dubya! But I sure do support the troops though! That should be a no-brainer but we’ve over-estimated the Far Right before. It’s called putting your money where your mouth is.

Supporting the troops begins with funding their recovery when they get hurt. Plain and simple. WHAT’S IN THE BUDGET? This Truth is self-evident. You don’t send these folks into battle with the proper armor or training and you don’t take care of them properly when they get hurt but you feel you support them because you support their war, you support them dying for your country while you go about your life making gruff noises about the Left Wing Media and what not. But you know what, you’re the pansy that doesn’t support them. Their lives ain’t piss to you.

Dubya's the only guy on earth who can decide not to fund soldiers when they get hurt then act all surprised when it comes out in the wash, then announce he's gonna launch a probe that history DEMANDS he's gonna totally ignore, just like the 911 probe. See also Katrina. See also Iraq Study. Get the picture? He doesn't give a shit. Never has. Do you?

Supporting the troops, it turns out, involves a little more than beating your puffed up chest and calling people names.

-iSenseChange

No Recollection of Anything, Actually

2007-04-16T11:49:00.000-07:00

Dim memories of a weird night. Much booze. Have taken to Jack Daniels and rocks of late. Mix has sugar, sugar’s poison and besides, where do you think all those vicious hangovers are coming from? It’s not the booze, I can assure you that! Because all I had was various combinations of straight booze and though I had to make the bartender pull over so’s I could launch a mighty barf on the sidewalk in front of a group of total strangers, I feel it’s incumbent upon me to say, there is no splitting headache element to my hangover on this particular Sunday morning. Or afternoon. Just fuzzy memories. Maybe I should work for the government.

Because nobody seems to be able to recall, well, anything, right? Libby can’t recall meetings with the Vice freaking President, Gonzales can’t recall conversations with the President of the United States of America (which I find fascinating. Like, what else do you have going on that’s distracting you from conversations with the President? Must have some super ultra sweet kind of tail your tapping, hope it ain’t what Foley’s been into but at this phase would that surprise any of us? Or maybe it’s just because all the conversations are kinda the same? GWB quietly works away at his coloring book as Cheney tells you the real deal through blood-stained teeth as he bites the heads off of live, mewling kittens). I wasn’t there for that, I don’t know, I haven’t read the report yet, may not ever. Why not work for the government? I can forget with the best of them.

“Driver, pull this fucking thing over, STAT! Gonna barf, gonna barf, gonna barf barf BAAAARF!” Dr. Suess, eat your motherfucking heart out. And I remember that crew of strangers on the road, some horrified, some finding humor in the situation and me just trying not to get any on my fine coat or hotel slippers. They’re saying something to me, that random crew but it’s totally slo-moed and horror-movie twisted. I don’t respond. I have more pressing issues on my mind at the present. Like barfing. So it’s easy to see how one can be distracted around momentous events.

Is Gonzales a drinker? If he wasn’t before he is now, I can assure you of that. Screw it. It’s not like any of this wasn’t anticipated, right? Fella wrote all about the potential fallout of this mess when he camwe up with the idea and why not? It’s good to be prepared, even if you know you’re not going to be able to remember any of it two years from now or even tomorrow if needs be. And they be, Citizens, they be. Hey, can’t figure the Press is gonna lay down forever, right? Media’s been used like Saturday night Shirley and everybody knows it. Maybe media’s tired of that next-morning-walk-of-shame-no-make-up-wrinkled-clothes-Just-Been-Fucked-and-Still-Cummy-Hair. Everybody knows it’s perfectly okay to be a whore, but it’s not okay when everybody knows that you specifically are that whore. At least, that’s what I’m told, and the difference is crucial.

I remember being a kid and the nuns at St. Mary’s were heavy into Iran Contra, watching these important-looking and serious people ask all sorts of questions and nobody seeming to be able to remember much of anything. On a 12 inch black and white tv, with coathangers covered in foil for reception.

“Sister Francis,” I remember asking, “why don’t they leave that poor fellow alone?” Didn’t seem fair, fellow was obviously not very smart and they keep asking him about things he can’t remember. He was a soldier, I thought, maybe he’d injured his head in the War. When I asked sister Francis about it she took a big drag from her smoke, exhaled and said “you see all the medals on that guys jacket?” and she wrinkles her brow like Bruce Willis as she continues, “you don’t get that many medals if you’re the type ‘a guy that forgets stuff all the time.” When I asked her if the other guys, the guys asking him the questions were lying too was the first time she looked at me as anything other than a necessary burden. She saw it had my interest and the rest of the nuns couldn’t have been more surprised when I joined them for the rest of the afternoon and every afternoon subsequent during those investigations. That poor fellow was Ollie North and that was when I started turning things to my advantage at the orphanage, now that I think about it, was when I started watching politics.

All of which is a far cry from last night’s shenanigans. Apparently had they not seen my hotel slippers theyd’ve never found me under the pool table, fast asleep. I remember the lights coming on, somebody taking a picture and me being loaded into a car by the owner and the bartender and I remember those good folk I nearly barfed on not six minutes later. Did I actually barf on somebody? I just can’t fucking remember, man! Which means I just don’t fucking know! Right?

-iSenseChange

RandomMP3age:“The Chauffeur” by Duran Duran.

The iSenseChange Guide to Impeaching Your Vice President

2007-04-16T11:47:00.000-07:00

"You know what? [Wells] said something here that we're trying to put a cloud on the vice president. We'll talk straight. There is a cloud over the vice president. He sent Libby off to [meet with former New York Times reporter] Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting, the two hour meeting, the defendant talked about the wife [Plame]. We didn't put that cloud there. That cloud remains…”
-Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's closing arguments in Scooter Libby’s perjury and obstruction-of-justice trial.

This all-important quote brought to you by the good folks at the SenseChange Center for Positive Change in lieu of the Media living up to its responsibilities and actually doing its job. Thanks, and have a GREAT day!

Yossarian Lament: Go to Mars, Not Iraq

2007-04-16T11:43:00.001-07:00

We’ll need war only so long as we believe it to be an inescapable component of the human condition. It isn’t. Not anymore. Many nations with nukes means we lose the evolution game. Intelligence, the advantage that preserved us to the position of ultimate power on earth ends up destroying us, making the whole of human experience little more than a catch 22. Which is, of course, madness! I want no truck with it! I suspect you war people want to kill me! And everybody else! Worse yet, I suspect you want to kill yourselves, even! Bloody nutcases, the lot of you!

I want to know when we’re going to get serious not only about fixing the mess but designing this world, this civilization of ours to accommodate people of all races and geographic locations using clean, fully safe and sustainable energy. The blood of dead dinosaurs have sustained us to the point where we will raze other nations to rubble for control over it. It’s well established that Mankind does not have a great history of sharing rare things with one another, and in light of this we have to recognize that it is far past time to utilize the very energy that all matter in the universe is made from. Make it safe. Make it available. You can. You’ve done so much else. Right? Of course you have.

I want to know when we get serious about actually colonizing both Mars and the Moon. That’s the reality tv I’m interested in. And I’m not talking about sending Gary Coleman up there or anything, I’m talking about the real deal. Genuine top-drawer ExtraTerrestroNauts. Get those assholes from American Idol on the horn, I’m bloody serious, man! Bet we could get a pretty good scene up there on the moon (next stop, Mars!) for far less than the cost of Iraq Deux alone. Sad but true. Am I wrong? By how much? You figure it would have to be an international venture? Of course! Shouldn’t all things? Isn’t it necessary to avoid this tired ‘my backyard versus yours’ mentality that has ruled our relations amongst one another for for centuries of war and inequality?

ExtraTerrestroNauts. ETNs? Sure. A ring to it. Can’t be cosmonauts til we get past the range of the Sun, OneForce tells me, but also likes the ring of the ETN thing. Go to Mars, not Iraq, that's what the Flaming Lips said and who knows better than them?

Alright, enough for now. Straighten up you filthy swabs, get yer shit together!

-iSenseChange

NonRandomMP3age: "Change" by Blind Melon

Gonzo Letters: Ash and Leopold: Next Woodward and Bernstein

2007-04-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

Gentlemen,

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you two for some of the only in-depth coverage of the Libby trial. My feeling is that in the years to come, yours will be the analysis (and text, I would imagine, and the second you write a book on it you just go ahead and let me know about it. I’ll buy, I’ll read and I’ll encourage others to do the same) people turn to when they seek answers about this strange time in American political history. What you’re doing is important, fellows, for as Georgie and the NeoCons even now seek to make a case so they can try their luck at Iran, a careful examination of the lies that began the Iraq mess could not be more timely or have more far ranging implications.

I say this little note of Cheney’s (involving ‘this Pres’) is the number one story in the realm, the second being the Media’s complete and utter lack of coverage on it. It’s not like there’s any digging involved. It’s out there. Somewhere in the halls of the Chief High Big Media Muckety Mucks a decision was made that the world can’t handle the Truth.

My position on Plame’s outing is that it’s extremely damning for ‘this Pres’ and this Vice President and enough to kick both of them to the curb and ideally into prison. I haven’t heard anybody calling it what it is, but I affix the label ‘High Treason’ and keep it there, for Plame was working on getting a handle on loose WMD’s from international arms gangs, the very thing that can and will be used against America in the years to come. If you knowingly disable a defender of your country for your own sick ends you are an enemy of your country, President or not. High treason in the highest office of the land. Strange days, friends, but that’s the situation as I see it.

CNN has decided not to cover this story, or to cover it enough to remain credible to the majority of the lemmings, and they’ll continue to do so (or not do so, depending on how you see it). The latest example is the non-coverage of the Fitzgerald’s summation in which he openly targets Richard ‘Dick’ Cheney as co-conspirator in this mess. What are the ramifications of this? Not sure, but one thing is certain; we’ll all know a whole lot about Anna Nicole Smith in the coming days, the death of a whore rather than impeachment of one.

I seek to help get this story out and as such have put a call out to the Gonzo Warriors, an international consortium of ne’er-do-well, miscreant bloggers that, from time to time, coordinate to hold leaders and industries to task for their meddling and malevolence. We’ve been firing piss-fueled emails into the head vampires at CNN demanding they start telling us the Real Story, and if they want to keep calling themselves the ‘Most Trusted Name in News’ they better start deserving it. Will it have an effect? On CNN? Probably not. But every letter that gets written is cut and pasted into our blogs, raising awareness within the larger community in which the Warriors thrive, that of the writingup.com community and maybe, just maybe we’ll hit one of Blitzer’s staffers with one of these things and get ‘em thinking about a little thing called ‘the Real Story.’

Anyways, you guys have been a source of inspiration to me and I get a lot of my information from Truthout. I link to your articles all the time and it has been an invaluable resource for my own crazed warblings. Check us out!

Sincerely,
iSenseChange, acting Co-General of the Gonzo Warriors

From the Desk of the General: A Call to Arms for Gonzo Warriors, WritingUppers and Unaffiliated TruthSeekers

2007-04-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

The Libby defence team has admitted evidence into the case in the form of a handwritten note that Dick Cheney wrote that directly implicates President George ‘Dubya’ Bush in the conspiracy to out Valerie Plame, making the whole world that much safer for international WMD vendors. This evidence, if wholly substantiated, should shitcan the Bush presidency and Cheney Vice-Presidency in one fell swoop, because, to me anyway, it means both dudes were entirely in on it, an admission of criminal action by those in the very highest Seats of Power in the Land. The Lands! And CNN has chosen not to cover it.

A dead, money-grubbing whore gets 24 hour play rather than the potential impeachment of a President, and I don’t know what’s worse. Or if there’s any difference. Death of a Whore versus Impeachment of One. One difference only, that I can think of at this point, and that is that I can be assured of every single excruciating detail about the one story and precious little of any value on the other. I like porn and I like politics but for me this one’s no contest: I want the Real Story over Fake Tits.

CNN has chosen not to cover this ‘Bush Treason’ thing (for is it not treason to divulge the identity of undercover operatives seeking to disarm those that would strike your country? If not treason, what? Certainly criminal, we must all agree on that, yes?) and my feeling is that they never will unless the People make them. The people, in this case, are YOU. And ME. If you’re a Gonzo Warrior I’m ordering it in my capacity as co-General or else the title don’t mean a lick to me. If you are a WritingUpper then I’m asking you as a fellow citizen and member in good standing of the same blog neighbourhood as you. If you’re just a netsurfer that’s found this page somehow amidst the rest of the Sound, Fury and Pornography and feel within you a soul that seeks Truth, write them a fucking letter, a letter to these BigBiz stooges that think they know what’s safe for you to learn about in that big scary world out there. Because it’s getting bigger and scarier, and these jerks’ll lull you right into an apocalypse if you let them. And if you let them, does that mean you deserve it? That’s how it looks from where I sit, Citizens.

If you dig my shit, think I’m a cool dude or owe me any fealty or favour, I ask of you to write these dicks. Call these people out. Tell them you want the Real Story. Cuz we’ve seen the byproduct of them choosing what to cover and not cover and it helped lead the World into War. At cnn.com , you can reach any of your personal faves or anti-faves there, or even the head vampires at CNN themselves. If you believe that Truth is important in these dangerous times then you write that letter. The media will not, cannot police itself, but it’s deader than shit in a box if nobody wants to watch it anymore.

-General iSenseChange of the Gonzo Warriors

p.p. I hereby wholeheartedly endorse Barack Obama for the 2008 presidential elections (09-02-07). The question is NOT whether he’ll do a great job –because he would- but rather if America deserves him and can elect him without murdering him first. I think Clinton’s a Big Biz shill as much as anybody else out there, Lefty or Righty. Obama’s a Change, Clinton’s More of the Same.

Neocon versus Nazi: Next Stop Iran!

2007-04-16T11:33:00.000-07:00

Seems like all I ever hear these days is about going to Iran. At what point is it established? Is it when four major carrier groups are placed in the Gulf, or five? When is it official? Do things have to be blowing up? Is that how we’ll all know that it’s officially Going On Over There Now and we should all be prepared to continue our steady diet of raw, pre-packaged Fear for some time, garnering the consent they’ll not need when the transition to open Fascism and Tyranny is complete? Orwell knew what the fuck was going on, he was just off by a few decades. But what the hell! I’m getting drunk! And so should you! Because they’re firing up another one, these fiends and for my part I only hope they can sell it better at home this time. That last deal was atrocious. This one’s easy and everybody knows it.

RECIPE FOR WAR IN IRAN: go to battle scene. Find bodies. Place evidence like weapons and I.D.s and BANGO, cake and pie, just like that Iran is now funding the Enemy in America’s Big Iraq Adventure and guess what friends and neighbors? The Adventure just got a whole lot bigger. And more expensive. But Dubya’s got a plan. “Ahm jus, hittin’ my stride, heh heh,” Georgie chuckles in his Connecticut, faux-Texas drawl, and why not? He gets another hand at the table, doubling down with dollars and blood against the Anarchy and Chaos in the most dangerous and strategically important area in the world. Maybe he’s got stuff figured out now. Maybe Afghanistan, Iraq and Katrina were just the warm-ups he needed to really dig in and fix this whole MidEast thingy out once and for all. Hey, could happen, right? Right? No? Oh. Shit. I see.

“Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, well, you’re not gonna fool me again!” But, awful mispronunciations aside, if there’s one thing this War and this President has shown the world several times over is that there’s seemingly no limit to the amount of times even a dolt like him can fool the American people, or at least enough of them. Stole the election twice. About to lead his country into another failure of a war, Iran, being the biggest fuck-up yet. It’s going to make Iraq look like the cakewalk it was always said to be but never, ever was.

ALTERNATIVE RECIPE FOR WAR IN IRAN: float all manner of American military and weaponry into an already crowded and enemy-filled Persian Gulf (I gather the Straight of Hormuz is nice this time of year and as good a place for an ambush as any) and start pushing around til somebody pushes back then pound the bejeezus out of them. I see this in the bars all the time and it almost always initiates the response it seeks, for varying degree of Good or Ill.

Iraq war lead-up? Iran War lead-up? Same shit and very nearly the same pile. Exact same loudmouth far Righties making wild claims and going totally unchallenged from this supposedly Left Wing media conspiracy, unchallenged by the simplest and most basic of questions: “but sir, you were wrong with practically everything that had to do with this Iraq fiasco, why on earth should America believe you in Iran? Shouldn’t you be pretty much finished in the information-providing game? Aren’t we dicks to let you keep broadcasting shit into our homes having already clearly demonstrated that it is, in fact, shit and dangerous shit that costs lives, money and international respect?”

According to Ray McGovern these NeoCons were know throughout Washington as the ‘crazies’ and rightfully so. Name a nuttier group in history. I know you’re gonna say it was the Nazis and yes, they had their own particular vision of how the Earth should be dominated by the Nation they served and yes, they did nutty, awful things because nobody was able to stop them, but would you say they were nuttier? Have you read “Project for the Next American Century?” Maybe not the same game but certainly in the ballpark. Haven’t checked it out yet, never heard of it? PNAC? Until you’re aware of who said it, who signed it and what’s happened since you got absolutely nothing to say about Nazi versus Neocon, and, quite frankly, don't know fuck-all about fuck-all as far as the status of your America in the Y2Ks. Anything you gotta say is just gut reaction and a lack of Real Knowledge of the Facts, you are leap years behind performing your duty as a Citizen and keeping an eye on those that would keep an eye, on governing those that would govern. You’re not interested in that duty, you assume other will do it for you, you can just keep your fluffy, Dorito-crumb encrusted existence for what it is and everything’ll somehow get better, maybe through God or through some kind of latent Positivist leanings or you’re still just hungover from that Last Great Rip before the American Dream floats right down the shitter to be replaced by it’s polar opposite, the American Nightmare. A SuperPower turned Desperate and Depraved, and what’re the Citizens doing? Enjoying the finest television programming in history. And working more hours. For less money. A Nation of Slaves for a Cadre of Vampires, and it’s not like you don’t know it. You do know, somewhere in ya, you know. But it’s always been easier to do nothing. For all of us.

Do I have to wait until they’re actually as bad as the Nazis before I can make a comparison? Because that’s not how it works in pro sports! “This guy might be the next Michael Jordan! Wayne Gretzky! Muhammed Ali! Babe Ruth! Jenna Jameson!” We do it in sports and porn but not politics or history? Why? Oh yeah, there’s just some comparisons we’re not supposed to make until it’s already Too Late, until the Damage has Been Done and the bootheel’s on my freaking neck? Well, fuck you, I guess. That doesn’t sound like a decent plan to me. And shit, how do you know I’m under your sway? I’m a blogger! I have no nationality! I am Earthian, you fucking hayseeds, and you have no sway over me! I am of that larger collective that recognizes the brotherhood of Humanity as transcending in importance over nationalist or religious affiliation. It’s time for the NextLevel, folks, because for good or ill it’s looking like we’ve just about used up this one and it either gets better or worse from here but not both and certainly not neither. Change is not only here but upon us. What color’s your Future?

Iraq War? Iran War? Same shit and very nearly the same pile because it’s all part of the same War, friends, these are “the Great Oil Wars.” Didn’t you know? Catch up. It actually started a long time ago…

Peace, Friends and Fellow Earthians.

-iSenseChange

RandomMP3age: "So Alive" by Love and Rockets

the Gonzo Letters: Anderson Cooper, 360 Degrees of Bullsht is Still Bullsht

2007-04-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

Mr. Anderson, (Cooper? Why do you guys always go by two last names? How's Tucker Carleton doin'? You guys ever give a listen to Wilson Phillips?)

I dare you to interview Nader and ask him what he thinks about George W. Bush. Or the Iraq War. Or the impeachment of the Thief In Chief. Or the destruction of Habeus Corpus and the rest of the Constitution. And the Project for the Next American Century. I triple-dog dare you to interview Noam Chomsky on these same items. Are you even allowed to? I have my doubts. I’m sure you understand. 360 degrees of bullshit is still bullshit, Anderson, and now's as good a time as any to pick up on that little gem.

Got balls, kiddo? Or not? Makes no difference to me. One of you guys is gonna crack and start telling the Real Story. Just lose it out there. Become Big Media’s Hamlet, go all post-modern on the set and find out that rather than getting fired the ratings shoot through the freaking roof, man! They try to cancel the dude and a huge audience that’s been starving for the Real Story actually backs his play. Brings dude back like Family Guy. We’re that hungry for Truth, man! We’d actually watch CNN for it! And you too, Andy!

Yes sir, one of you guys is gonna crack and start tellin’ the Real Story and the rest of you’ll be considering yourself lucky to be judging wet t-shirt contests for a quick buck in Ft. Lauderdale outside of fifteen years, way things are shaping up in America today. People are pissed and there’s all sorts of culpable jackals for people to blame but the one thing just about anybody can agree on, Lefty or Righty, is that the Media is full of shit. And you, friend, are the Media, as much as anybody on earth. And most have an inkling that you and guys like you totally shit the bed on Doing Your Job during the Gulf Deux lead-up lies, leading to Iraq, aka the big, deadly, expensive and stinking mess that every single one of your america citizens has to now find a way to deal with.

Not to mention the whole neoconservative thing? How exactly did you guys miss that? Things like PNAC, so you know, are classified as one of those things people like to know about during things like, for example THE 2000 ELECTIONS before these HIDEOUS FREAKS TOOK OFFICE! People like to know that the running VP is a sick and weird man with sick and weird fiend-buddies that share sick, weird dreams of world domination. People like to know about these things, Andy. It’s called the Real Story. And people want to hear it. All of it.

So do it. Save your soul. Start telling the Real Story, Andersen. Be That Guy. Better you than that chowderhead Zahn, I think we can all agree on that, right? Right. So, do it!

I dare you.

Sincerely,
Manny Duke

p.s. Got another one for you. I dare you to interview the protestors, Andy. Go out there on the street and grab a few of them. They’d love to talk to you. I promise. Be the easiest thing you could ever do, and yet it’s barely ever done. You know how many years I read about Cindy Sheehan before I actually heard her voice on your network? Thanks CNN! You’re the “Most Trusted Name in News!”

*

From : 360
Sent : Saturday, February 3, 2007 8:26 PM
To :
Subject : Anderson Cooper 360

| | | Inbox

Thanks for your email. Here’s our problem. We want you to know that we really do read every single email you viewers send us. No, honestly. But reading your email is one thing, and composing individual answers to each one is another. That would be a full-time enterprise. In which case, there’d be no AC 360. In which case, there’d be no emails. You see where we’re headed.

Anyway, the best we can do is to acknowledge that we have indeed received and will read your message, and this little note is to let you know that. It’s automatic, yes; fails to take into account whether you’ve patted us on the back or slapped us across the face; does not differentiate between praise, correction, fury, proposals of marriage, or invitations to get lost. But rest assured we’ll know that part when we read it!

Thanks again for your interest. Go to CNN.com and click "Watch" for instant access to FREE Video!

AC 360 staff & CNN Public Information
“CNN, The Most Trusted Name In News”

the Gonzo Letters: to Big Fat Pimp Lou Dobbs

2007-04-16T11:26:00.000-07:00

Hey Lou,

I'd like to know when you guys are going to cover the biggest piece of news to yet come out of the Libby case, specifically a personally handwritten missive from VP Cheney directly implicating the President in the scandal. I refuse to believe CNN has not yet heard of this news, as the evidence was admitted in the case by Libby's defenders and you no doubt have all manner of reporters on the case (no excuses, here’s the link: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013107Z.shtml). I can only assume somebody up in the chain of command has decided America doesn’t need to know certain types of news during ‘wartime’ and about the President. This is the same type of half-assed coverage that got America into the Iraq war mess in the first place! Guys like you, Mr. Dobbs, have just as much culpability for the Iraq war as anybody on earth, in deciding as you do what to cover or not cover.

So much for the ‘Most Trusted Name in News.’ More like ‘Most Regular Source of Propaganda’. Other than Fox of course, but that’s a pretty low bar to set for anybody even remotely interested in calling themselves journalists, right? Right.

Try to be the champion of the People all you like but until you start telling the whole Truth many will see you as little more than a big, fat pimp (or worse, I guess, a whore?) no matter how many books you write. I’m asking for Truth Lou, and more than that, I’m asking you to do your fucking job.

Don’t be a pimp! Or a whore!

Respectfully,
iSenseChange

*

From : Lou Dobbs Tonight
Sent : Saturday, February 3, 2007 2:31 AM
To :
Subject : Thank you for your E-mail

Thank you for your e-mail. We read each and every comment, but are unable to respond personally to so many.
We value your interest and thank you for watching Lou Dobbs Tonight

the Gonzo Letters: Mr. Wolf Blitzer

2007-04-16T11:24:00.000-07:00

Mr. Blitzer,

I'd like to know when you are going to cover the biggest piece of news to yet come out of the Libby case, specifically a personally handwritten missive from VP Cheney directly implicating the President in the scandal. I refuse to believe CNN has not yet heard of this news, as the evidence was admitted in the case by Libby's defenders and you no doubt have all manner of reporters on the case (no excuses, here’s the link: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013107Z.shtml). So when will you cover it and more importantly, why haven't you yet? 20 minutes every hour on the non-story of Biden's 'supposedly racist but not really' comments and not one mention of this huge story emerging in the Libby case.

Mr Blitzer, you are, as much as anyone else on earth, an established and esteemed member of the 4th estate, sir, and it's well past time all you guys started acting like it, doing this extremely important job of yours so the People get the whole story. What you decide to cover shapes the landscape of discussion and debate, and what you decide not to cover gets buried forever. It's an awesome responsibility, Wolfy, and dude, you ain't cuttin' it! So START!

It’s called evolution Wolf, and if you don’t remain relevant then don’t be surprised when the internet and the blogworlde buries you’re like a stinking, dead cat.

Yours,
iSenseChange

p.s. appreciated your mewling interview with Veep Cheney very much. You very nearly showed some sand asking the Dark Lord himself about his lesbian daughter! ‘Out of line’ indeed, imagine you asked him the questions that really matter! Like his profiteering with Halliburton! Hoo boy, the fit hits the shan then, eh Wolfy? Anywho, glad to see an inkling of spine for once. Peace to you Wolfy. And do your fucking job!

*

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Evidence Implicating Dubya in the Libby Trial: CNN Doesn't Cover the Story

2007-02-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

How many of you are aware, as of this moment, that George W Bush has been directly implicated in the Libby case with evidence penned from the Dark Lord himself, Dick Cheney? Hear of this yet? Ask yourself; why not?

Less talk. Go here. Check it out. Then meet back here.

Deal is, Cheney names the Pres in a note discussing the vile act of outing an undercover agent to get back at her husband for speaking the Truth against the war lead-up lies and this note remains as evidence. Against the Pres. In a criminal case. Which'd make impeachment a bloody snap. We always knew this thing went high up, folks, and we always knew in our hearts that it went up to at least that creep of creeps, Dick 'Darth' Cheney, but this note indicates that 'the Pres' had his grimy mitts all over it too. Fairly important shit, no?

Worthy of coverage? Absolutely. Being covered? Not at all.

CNN is covering the case daily but I've been waiting for that mamby-pamby Wolf Bullschitzer et al to talk on this extremely important document and nothing at all. It's been introduced to the court, a piece of the case and CNN is actively choosing not to cover it. Fucking criminal. After everything that's happened, after all the lies, all the grime, all the crime, all the time, Dubya still gets a free pass.

Want to know what this translates down to? CNN actually has a reprter on the scene all day every day to 'cover' this story. This piece of mind-numbingly important evidence is introduced in the trial, this 'reporter' calls in this information and somebody at the office decides this is not newsworthy. Or rather, that John Q. Public shouldn't see it. For whatever reason.

Need another reason to join some kind of media reform group and force an independant fourth estate?

All. And I'm bloody sick of this shit.

-iSC

p.p. Cheney could very well go down in the Libby case. And Dubya? Could go down in so many different ways it's crazy. It ain't about crossing your fingers, America, it's about pointing the finger, and it's about making your representatives represent you like they're supposed to.

Cult of Personality: the Strange Birth of the Bushite

2007-02-17T11:47:00.000-08:00

It was Johnny Canuck that alerted me to this emerging segment of humanity, the uniquely American creature I’ve taken, for a time, to call the Bushite. They are that still sizable chunk (yes Virginia, 30% is extremely low for an American president, but it’s still a chunk, do you see? Go look at a pie-chart. That’s a good girl!) that remain fiercely defensive of all things Bush in spite of all the evidence of so many foul and hideous goings-on. This is a brand new field for us armchair Cultural Anthropologists, and make no mistake about it, friend, “Doc” Sensey’s on the case! To learn, and by learning, ease you through these most difficult days. And it’s absolutely free of charge! Sure! It’s of Historical Significance, I’m told, by those in the know.

After a scintillating session in which Cajun Rooster suggested it irresponsible for Johnny Canuck (and indeed, others) to blame the President for the War in Iraq, I start to get a little bit of a glimpse about what you 30%ers are about, finally, which leads me to think about what you're going through right now.

Okay, let the healing begin.

First a survey here. Your opinions are fine, no right or wrong answer, okay? Tally ho!

1) Has George W. Bush, in your opinion, ever lied about anything to anybody during his tenure as President?

2) What mistakes (if any) would you say George W. Bush made before and during Gulf Deux?

3) Did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction?

4) Was Saddam Hussein responsible, in any way, for the events of 911?

5) Is there a demonstrable link between Saddam Hussein and Al Queda prior to Iraq Deux?

6) Might George W. Bush just be the best President America has ever had?

7) Would you say George W. Bush is a smart man?

8) Is America winning the War in Iraq?

9) Should America wage war with Iran, and, if yes, should they do it sooner rather than later?

Remember: No right or wrong answers here,
I'm looking for your opinion, okay?

And listen, I have a question, do you 30%ers have a name for yourself? I mean, I've heard 'Bushite' bandied about, maybe as good as any, but your input is invited. What are the hip kids calling it these days in the prep schools? This is MetaCulturalAnalysis here, cutting edge shit. We know all about the 'observer effect' here at the SenseChange Center for Positive Change and don't give a crap! We factor it into the equation. because we can, Mister! It's just like accounting for the warp in the table when you take your shot at the 8 ball. Nothing to it at all.

We study what makes a Bushite tick, the breadth of their devotion to this man, etc. Shit Cajun, I'll split the proceeds with you. I mean it man. Maybe not split, you understand, you're still not that limited a resource, right? You understand. But I'd definitely send you a nice chunk of change on the deal.

Right! Thanks for this, Cajun, Radical Patriot, and yes, even the bloodthirsty Pastor! C’mere ya big lugs! Not so close, not so close! Yeesh, Pastor! Hands off, you scoundrel! I'm only fifteen!

-iSenseProfits! Ding bloody ding, Captain!

p.p. Starting to see similarities in GWB and the Bushite 30%ers, in their actions, in their ability to create reality from sheer fantasy, and they believe it themselves. Heavy. Will expand on the idea as it evolves. I smell cutting edge Pulitzer stuff here, folks an as always, yours for a bargain at six cents a year!

p.p. C'mon, Cajun, Johnny's absolutely right, you fellows need a NAME! "ProBush" seems pretty bland but "PATRIOTS(!!!)" or "AMERICANS(!!!)" could create confusion. You think it over, okay? Input welcome, as always. otherwise you get Bushite, kissing cousin to Bullshit, so it may be apropos...yeah...you know what, Cage? Forget the name thing. It's Bushite for sure...

Porno Justice and the Impending Rennaisance

2007-02-17T11:44:00.000-08:00

Many say that things can never change but I assure you the reverse is certain: the only thing that never changes is that everything, over time, undergoes not only Change but Massive Change. I think it has never been closer. I see it and feel it and walk out amongst it, for the wheels of change grind slowly and once it can be picked up by a dude standing in the right place with the right kind of ears it's already moving too fast to stop. It has once again manifested itself, the irresistable, perhaps immortal force that has been felt before, during and after whatever sized Bang started the whole shootin' match off for Good or Ill or perhaps both. Definitely both. That's the oppositional binaric omnipresense, you have always (or perhaps never) existed under! Suck it in! 2K7 is the year the Rennaissance begun. Be a part of it. Contribute. Make it so. Because you'd rather define the Change than have the Change define you!

Rennaisance requires of us (all of us) to agree upon a set of rules that we can all live by.
-No more starvation amongst us.
-No more War amongst us.
-Protect the Earth.
-More dialogue amongst us.
-An atmosphere of Mutual Benefficienality amongst Citizens of all nations.
-That the People demand it to be so.

And what of the death of Saddam over the holidays? That one kinda snuck up on me but I'll call it what it is:

"Murder Amongst Puppets,
a Play on a Stage!
Penultimate present from the NeoCon Age!"

World breathes sigh at death of despised dictator? Hardly. A play on the stage presented both by and for America. And what makes better meat than the Death of an Asshole? Do you believe it was Justice? So too will I, if and only if we also include (like the good criminal investigators we all are) an investigation of those who have both aided and abetted said individual in the perpetration of said criminal acts. That's if you truly believe in Justice. But take heart if you don't. You are in the majority. For us 2 %ers it's Porno Justice at best and we'll have no truck with it.

Meanwhile intense debate continues in the Whitehouse but the last thing they're discussing is Vietnam and how to win it.
"Figger we still got time to bomb Iran?, Dick? Heh heh."
"Absolutely, Georgie. Have a cookie. Thataboy!" Cheney's a schemer. He knows what time they have left. And he wants, more than anything else, to do.

Grim words on these early days of 2K7, but i don't feel grim. I feel hopeful, Citizens, i truly do. I think we've seen how bad it can get and don't want to go there. i think we are starting to believe that Positive Change is an outright necessity. For our own survival. I believe it in my heart to be so and I am hardly alone.

Peace, Citizens. Prosperity to all in the Coming Age.

-iSenseChange

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At Zeitgeist’s Zenith: the Slugging of George W. Bush.

2007-02-17T11:38:00.000-08:00

“We’ll succeed,” says Georgie under the literal shadow of Ho Chi Minh and ever the apt pupil of History, “if we don’t quit.” This, the lesson Dubya’s chosen to learn from America’s Vietnam adventure. Jesus! What in the Christ does that mean?!? Anybody?!? In a cornucopia of weird things this man has said and done during his presidency alone, how is it he can still surprise me? Gotta hand it to him.

Tell you what I learned from America’s Vietnam Adventure: If you leave, IT DOESN’T MATTER. None of the scary things all the war hawks bleat about ever end up happening. Never. Just as America’s dismal failure in Vietnam never had bupkis to do with either halting or advancing the spread of Communism, so too will America’s inevitable failure in Iraq have nothing to do with the halting or advancing of some UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE, wide ranging, superpowered, Islamofascist Caliphate. A bunch of scary words that don’t amount to a hill of beans. You figure the Shiites and the Sunnis are gonna get together to take over the world? They’re actually blood fucking enemies! And that’s just two of the many splintered and rivalling Islamic sects that have all sorts of ancient reasons to hate one another until the end of time. Another ugly lie from the NeoCon hoard of ugly liars designed to make them and their buddies in the MilitaryIndustrialComplex somehow yet richer.

Speaking of Lies and Liars, Bush may now be impeached. You realize that, yes? Cheney may now be held accountable for his very obvious war profiteering with the ineffectual but now ‘vastly richer for the experience’ Halliburton, also. And he ought. They ought. American Citizens of all stripes, you owe it to all your country holds dear to remove these two men. If you are a politician, get the ball rolling. If you are an American citizen, start writing letters. Do it because these men are scoundrels that deserve it, more than any men in America's checkered political history or do it for the savage beating they delivered to your once grand Constitution but most importantly, do it as an example to the next round of liars and thieves that think they can twist and pervert your American Dream to their own sick ends. A message must be sent to whoever comes next. Nothing else you can do could be more important than that. Period. Get your shit together, America, the rest of us are sick of waiting for it and watching these fucks take what was Great and turn it to Shit.

I had the chance, I’d slug him. Right in the face. Love to. Dubya, I mean. Can’t. No access. But maybe you do? Maybe you’re a congressperson and you’re at a dinner party and President GWB is there and he says or does something really stupid and you just slug him right in the face, hard as you can. What happens? Sure, you get jumped by the secret service, but would they off you? Prob’ly not. So, what happens? Especially if, as a congressperson and pretty much all of yer constituents are glad as hell you did it? The path to the next election may well lay in slugging George Bush in the mouth. Hard as you can. Or maybe it just gets you and extended stay in Leavenworth. Or worse.

Fuck it. I had the chance I’d do it and let the chips fall where they may. No amount of waterboarding would ever remove the smile from my face. But I haven’t access. But maybe you do? Maybe you’re a ten year old winner of the National Spelling Bee and the President is gonna perform some utterly meaningless publicity function (rather than figuring out any kind of realistic solution to the Iraq Problem) that involves you, giving you the access that I lack. Well, here’s what you do: you screw up your little fists and right when he opens his mouth to say something stupid you pop him one, hard as you can. See if you can drop him with a ten-year-old, spelling-bee-champ haymaker and when he looks up at you with tears streaming down his face, right before the savage beating at the hands of the Secret Service, you look him dead in the eyes and tell him you did it for the soldiers. The world will see it and cheer you on, small comfort, perhaps, as thirty years later you’re still wasting away in some dingy prison in Syria (“waterboarding” W-A-T-E-R-B-O-A-R-D-I-N-G, “waterboarding”), but at least you’ll know in yer little heart o’ hearts you did the one thing that entire rest of the world would have loved to do. And you’d be famous! Maybe you write a book or something? There’s money there, kiddo, and ol’ Sensey’s here to help, should you need it. You can bet yer sweet bippy on that.

Have I said enough to be labelled an enemy combatant yet? I’m never certain anymore. Fuck it. Torture, I’m told, builds Character and as for the gulags, well, I’m no stranger to hard work. The fresh air can only do me good at this point.

Peace to you Citizens. Of all stripes. Even those that don’t look or talk like you and me. You dig? You better.

-iSC

p.p. Impeach them or deserve whatever dicks gain power next. You’ll get no sympathy from me and the whole world’ll agree that you deserve it. Wake up. Throw out the trash.

Citizen's Note # 911: inre 'What To Do About George 'Dubya' Bush

2007-02-17T11:36:00.000-08:00

IMPEACH HIM. AND EVERYBODY AROUND HIM. FOR YOUR VERY SOULS. AND APOLOGIZE TO THE WORLD. FOR ACTING LIKE DICKS.

That is all.

This message brought to you by the good folks at the SenseChange Center for Positive Change. Thanks, and have a GREAT day.

-iSC

Oedipus Bush and the Tale of Two Daddies

2007-02-17T11:29:00.000-08:00

But didn't this always Oedipal Bush presidency just get ratcheted up a notch when Rummy finally got the bum’s rush for messing up everything he laid eyes on, for now Georgie’s gotta choose between two daddies, right? Sure!

Here’s the call, folks, and remember where you heard it first: Before the 2006 Election Thumpin’, the Presidency belonged to ‘OilSlick’ Dick Cheney. After the "2006 Thumpin' heard Round the World," the Presidency belongs to former President George ‘Also a Liar and War Profiteer’ Bush Senior. Dubya becomes the bumbling Prince George he’s always been with Jeb as maybe some kind of a Prince Hal type. This is Shakespeare, right? But what does it mean and how does it end?

IRAQ: Ol’ Cheney’ll howl “Stay the Course” forever. Twice as loud now that Rummy’s been turfed. No cost in dollars and blood is too high, ever. Not his money and not his blood, thankyew veddy much. So who cares?

Daddy Bush and his crew’ll be leaning towards declaring a meaningless victory tomorrow and getting the fuck out, but keeping the big Superbases intact (you know about the huge SuperBases, right? America's not really leaving Iraq no matter what they say they're gonna do), making scads of money every which way but loose (why stop now?) and leaving options for MidEast control firmly intact. Smart money’s on never declaring any kind of finish to the thing. Leave, but leave your options open…

ON IRAN: Before the 2006 Election Thumpin,’ Dubya’s daddy of choice was the ideological neoconservative father; ‘Oilslick’ Dick, who remains, to this day, very obviously balls out for attacking Iran as soon as possible. Probably the very first words out of his mouth when he showed up to to work the day after the Thumpin Heard Round the World was “find some kinda good reason before January first to bomb Iran to smithereens and just bloody do it.” Been grumbling menacingly about it for years.

Daddy Bush, who once resisted pressing on to Baghdad for fear of the type of chaos we’re now actually witnessing, will tell Georgie (through his old cronies who now have total access to the Whitehouse, new SecDef Gates and Baker III) to lay off Iran, to put it back in his pants for awhile. ‘Finish you’re plate, Georgie,’ Pappa Bush will admonish: ‘no Iran until you’ve finished your Iraq! And you haven’t even touched your Afghanistan!’

So, Dubya’s gotta choose between his two daddies, one ideological, one biological. Like bein’ a President wasn’t tough enough! Gosh! But enough on that. Dubya has to go with Bush Sr because it’s like a default position. He’s used to daddy bailing him out. Happened all his life. And everybody, everywhere, knows it.

How deeply embarassing for Dubya, who tried so desperately to become every bit the swaggering dick his 'wimpy' father never was. That's the thing that so many people get wrong and I see it all the time. Bush Sr was never running the show for Dubya because he quite simply never woulda ran it that way. Dubya saw Daddy's presidence as a humiliating failure and surrounded himselves with as many tough guys as he knew. Unfortunately, for the whole world, these tough guys were also insane. But so endeth the song of the NeoCon, a return to a presidencey thought long gone, two Bush presidents; a Father, a Son.

There you have it. Take it to the bank.

-iSC

p.p. Impeach Bush. Bust Cheney first for War Profiteering. Now.

Schoolyard Diplomacy and the Apocalyptic Chicken

2007-02-17T11:24:00.000-08:00

Never speak to your enemies. Even if they ask you to. Only threaten them. Because that’s what just always, always works.

Dubya holds True to Form: He’s nuts, first of all. Can we establish that? Nuts. I mean, whatever the measuring stick is, he’s nuts. And he still wants to attack Iran!?! After mismanaging ever single thing he’s ever done in office, including two preemptive and illegal wars and a natural disaster. And yes, Billy-Bob, I understand that you cannot manage a Natural Disaster. You can, however, manage your response to one. Fair enough?

Want more? Ground Zero remains a smouldering hole, the Constitution in tatters, SoleSuperPowerStatus in jeopardy, global opinion at lowest in history, went from balanced books to the Largest National Debt in the entirety of Human History. And in spite of all that (and so much more it staggers me) Dubya still thinks maybe he can pull off somethin’ against Iran. Which most experts agree won’t be the cakewalk that Iraq was supposed to be but never was. It will take nothing less than magic for GWB to somehow not fuck that up. Act of God, maybe. Just throwin' that in there.

Attacking Iran? I figure you’re gonna want a particularily good quarterback for that one, and GWB has never actually been a particularly good anything. Wasn’t he a cheerleader at University? Did I hear that? Is that fact?

I digress. But it’s weird, no? A cheerleader? So weird. Best not to think of it. Where were we? Iran! Right!

Everything you need to know about Iran and America can be broken down into a game of ‘Apocalyptic Chicken.’ “Sure!” America says, “you don’t quit fucking with the nukes we’re gonna smack you down. Hard. Like Iraq. We might not be 'winning' anything but how anxious are you for a big mitful of Iraq-Styled Chaos in yer faces? Wanton, random destruction, pretty much everywhere, no plans and no problems just one big stinking mess. Well? You want that kind of shit on you? Cuz fuck it. We’re on a tear.”

And Iran is like, ‘well, shit, there’s a chance they can’t attack us because of this whole emerging world (America, even!) public opinion thing. There’s that. And the whole fear of finally unifying the Arabs, who could all, regardless of creed or culture, legitimately see the American Adventures as a full fledged invasion on all things Oil. And they’re still stretched ridiculously thin with the wars they’ve got, not to mention the thumpin’ heard literally around the world when the Dems took back the House and Senate.

No way Iran’s gonna blink first. There standing up to the biggest dog on the block and the whole Arab world is watching them do it. If anything, an American attack would only make Iran stronger in the eyes of the Muslim world, ala Hamas after the Israel-Lebanon thing.

So that’s Iran-America for you (see also: North Korea). A game of chicken. Schoolyard Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age, the diplomacy of choice for the manchild American President. And former cheerleader(?). But the Times they are a changin', eh Citizens? You bet yer fur they are.

-iSenseChange

p.p. Oh yeah, almost forgot. Impeach Bush. And Cheney. Now.

p.p.p. Out of Iraq and into Selma! Yowza!

Blogger's Brew

2007-02-17T11:22:00.000-08:00

Inre: My Morning
These are authorities. They carry weapons and they are allowed to do so. They are the Apparatchik of State. And they’ve just waltzed into your house like they own it and busted you like the bank. You’re place, as usual, is absolutely lousy with illicit substances. What do you do? Nothing to do. Nothing you can do. Submit to it. Try not to let it wreck your day. Find a reason to smile on your way to the patrol car. Ask them if they’d mind turning on the radio. Treat ‘em like a cabbie.

Inre: Iraq
Declare victory. Tomorrow. And you get…the…fuck…out. That easy. Sure, the World will know it’s a load but most Americans probably won’t. At most, in time, a generalized and vague recollection of some kind of confusion followed by some kind of victory. And all will be bliss once more in the Land of the free and the Home of the Distracted. The argument will go ‘Yeah, but we won.’ With the obvious response: ‘Won what? How?’ Righty and Lefty will argue about it for years, forever, like IranContra and ultimately, BullGoose Loonie Lefty and Religio-Redneck Righty agree to disagree, and so it goes. And you’re out. Right?

Inre: Fashion Trends, and Other Ways I Suffer for the Whim of the Capricious Masses.
Nobody sells turtlenecks anymore. You notice that? Their not fashionable. But my last one’s shot all to hell and well, shit man, I just like a nice, thick, black, turtleneck sweater. Maybe just tight enough to show the shoulders off a little, y’know? But they don’t sell ‘em. Everything's got zippers. It’s what they think you’re gonna think is hip the next time you’re at the mall. But where the fuck, pray tell, does that leave me? This culture is not adequately servicing my needs and hasn’t for a long time. Maybe it’s time to take off again.

Hmmmm.

Inre: Impeachment.
He ought be. And deep in America’s collective heart of hearts, they all know it, every damned one of them. The deal of the thing is nabbing Cheney first for Halliburton-related war profiteering. Also a Federal Crime. Should be nothing easier to do on earth. But maybe I’m missing something…

Inre: Her
Yeah. I fall in love too easily. But I fall in love for this just barely fathomable ideal. If it were summertime I’d suggest we go to the desert, do huge rails and see what comes out of our mouths. Or into them, for that matter. Yeah. Absolutely. Take ‘er some place fun. Have fun. No pressure with the understanding that I will conspire for a kiss. Powerless not to. It’s entirely in her prerogative to yeah or nay at any point. Yeah. That’s the plan. Something like that. Not summer though. SO what then? Something fun.

Inre: The Finally Dead NeoCon Movement and America Killing It.
Always said the only thing that can save the World from America was Americans. Turns out I was dead-on balls on that one friends and neighbors. This makes the Far Right comes back a little. The big NeoCOn experiment is over, a miserable failure on every count, something we can all agree on. Maybe the whole American Tragicomic experience of GWB spontaneously generates this feeling that regardless of Lefty or Righty leanings, Things are Bollixed and Need to be Fixed. That’s the reality, America. Not only do you have to deal with that reality but you have to deal with the situation. You have to fix it. Sorry. It’s not easy and it’s not something you can just make a phonecall about as you laze on the couch with the remote and that heaping bag of Doritos. Nope, things need to be fixed and they take Time. Your Time.

Inre Alcoholism and Minding Your Own Business.
Am I an alcoholic? Absolutely! And more! I’m all sorts of aholics! I’ll take no stones from anybody for it neither! Kiss my ass! Shuffle on! Yeah! I’ll take a Jack Daniels. On the rocks. In a brandy snifter. To go. And make it a double. Heh heh heh.

Inre My Writing Style and Who the Hell is Spenser Tracy? Why Not Miles Davis?
Some dude called my writing style some kind of cheap, Spencer Tracy ripoff. Had he called me some kinda second-rate Hunter S Thompson hack there woulda been nothing I coulda said. But dude prob’ly doesn't even know who the good doctor even was. Needless to say I wasn't offended. Told him the whole thing's actually a kinda first person narrative, which is old as dust.

Inre: Getting Things Fixed
Like monitoring your elections. And not forgetting it the day after it’s over, regardless of the outcome. Things need to be fixed. The elections are a sham. Machines going home at night with “administrators”? What the hell, pray tell, is that? A great big, yellow button that enables anybody to add as many votes as they like? Ridiculous. Lefty or Righty it is ridiculous. Dubya made his America Votes Act and, for Lefty or Righty, it has proven insufficient. Like everything else he's touched. Needs to be fixed, or rather, needs to be corrected. The fix is already in, Voters. The day after the vote, the week after, the year after, the People need to ensure that Democracy is protected, corrected and they need to not back down, ever, until an election’s result is at least as unimpeachable as the old, pieces-of-paper-in-a-cardboard-box deal that happens to work about a thousand times better than these dubious machines.

Inre: This Little Blog o’ Mine, I’m Gonne Let It SHINE!
Prob’ly I coulda just blogged anyone of these little paragraphs on their own and got reads, comments and whatever else be the coinage of the realm. As it is it’s a big jumbled mess that only the Faithful will read right through but what of it? I like it. Feels like some kinda jagged jazz scene and me and you are rippin’ it up out there, flyin' for a crowd that's snappin' they fingers and bobbin' they heads. Dig on that. Yeah.

Exeunt.

In Defence of Third World Debt Relief: As it Stands, We Look Like Dicks

2007-02-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

I believe in third world debt relief. Fuck it. We have everything, they have nothing. What’re we gonna do, watch the little bastards choke to death or what? Look how horrifically skinny so many of them are when they die and how grotesquely fat so many of us are when we die. They look like fucking Auschwitz victims and we look like that big fat dude in ‘Seven’ that was forced to eat himself to death. Y'know, the one the serial killer set up to represent the deadly sin of Gluttony? What better evidence of a fucked up status quo? And i don't see any way of denying it, bubba.

You have onboard GPS systems in your shoes, they have dust and seeds, maybe some rice and they’re being taxed to hell for every mote of it by their governments. Do you know in some places they tax the very same water that some people’s ancestors have sustained themselves from since the beginning of time?

Fuck it. We look like dicks. All of us. Even you. Chew on that, friend. No way they can ever pay it back, especially with the fucked up interest we’re layin’ on ‘em. Here’s the motto: “Join the globalization scene! Be poor forever! Like you have a choice anyway! Hah!”

I’m of a mind to give a hand to these fuckers, you know? But you know what? You don’t just give money to their politicians because what do we know about politicians? Right. They almost always take the money. At every possible junction. SO how do you circumvent that? You give ‘em infrastructure, if they’ll accept it. And you make it clear, you’re people ain’t free then neither are the sewer systems. Or the universities. Or the hospitals. Am I being crazy here? Ignore, if you will, the madman in the corner. For as long as you can bare it. The sheer weight of daily hypocrisy.

I say let's give ‘em a chance, not another half-century of debt.

Greed is also a Deadly Sin, you know that? Look it up.

-iSenseChange, but it's gotta start somewhere...

Prob'ly

2007-02-17T11:18:00.000-08:00

The problem is that I fall in love too easily.
And I pine.
And I imagine.
And have weird standards.
And am easily disillusioned.
And can be, I’m told, difficult.
Just caught myself again.
Like her though.
Blue-green eyes.
Very sexy.
Fun.
Hip.
Gets me.
I think.
Said she misses me.
Hadn’t spoke to her since that night.
Gave her a call.
Just one.
All I ever give.
She didn’t return it.
We’re to meet for drinks.
Prob’ly smoke one too.
And I imagine all these possibilities.
But how can she be that woman?
That I created in my own mind?
Better that she’s not.
Better that she’s somethin’ else I could never have imagined.
No doubt she is.
Hmmm.
The problem is that I fall in love too easily.
What to do with this?
A love letter she’ll never see.
Prob’ly.

-iSenseChange

Citizen's Note # 11: inre Presidential Oversight at Long Last

2007-02-17T11:11:00.000-08:00

CONGRATULATIONS AMERICA: YOU HAVE JUST DONE THE FIRST THING SINCE 911 TO NOT ONLY MAKE AMERICA SAFER BUT THE WORLD AS WELL, BY PROVIDING OVERSIGHT ON THIS INSANE HALFWIT AND HIS EVIL BAND OF PIRATES. YOU ARE NOT AS BAD OFF AS I THOUGHT EVEN 24 HOURS AGO. GIVE YOURSELF A HAND. NOW'S A GOOD TIME TO START DEMANDING THAT THINGS GET FIXED.

This message brought to you from the good folks at the SenseChange Center for Positive Change. Thanks so much and have a GREAT day.

-iSenseChange

p.p. Inre Rummy: So long, asshole! Can they get rid of Cheney for Halliburton related War Profiteering? Hmmmmm. Another blog entirely...

Your iSenseChange Congressional Election 2006 Headquarters

2007-02-17T11:07:00.000-08:00

iSenseChange here, reporting live from the Front Lines of the War on Information on this, the NIGHT OF NIGHTS! It's like a football game out there folks, and at this stage it's still early. The thing to do is to get a few good belts of booze (and whatnot) into you and ride this hoary bitch out to the bitter end, find out what type of world it'll be tomorrow. Right? Cuz that's what's at stake here, nothing less. Some kind of control or counter over this crazed dingus and his madmen puppetmasters OR NONE WHATSOEVER.

“Congress, which once spent an entire year investigating a married man's attempt to cover up an illicit act of oral sex, has shown no curiosity whatsoever about a war that the administration elected to wage that has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands and led our own people to commit war crimes and squandered hundreds of billions of dollars and degenerated into civil war.”
-Garrison Keillor

Say what you will of your Reality TV but give me American Politics any day of the week and thrice on Sundays. Why? Because when you peel back all the lies, dirty lies and outright bullshit (no mean feat, that) what do you have? Greed. Sex. Violence. And more! All those juicy little things that the Reality folks are trying so hard to manufacture on some island somewhere. No sir, I say fuck the island, I’ll take the Great American Bubble!! You?

Be mashing all sorts of Election night ramblings in this space as the news comes in. Make sense of it later, what sense there be.

Big questions: will exit polls mean a goddamned thing? They were fucked up last time, will be fucked up this time. Which means any information coming in right now that is based on exit polls is bloody useless. Exit polls versus end result ends up being the measure of how much cheating there was, remember that one, Citizens. That's a little iSC election equation for you. How's that for cutting edge coverage, eh? Yours, as always, at the cut rate price of six bucks a year!

Smarmy fink, Joe Benedict Lieberman, running as an independent, defeats Democrat Ned Lamont, makes it in by sheer Republican might! Strange days indeed, but maybe not so much for this Dem in name alone. As everybody knows. Will Lieberman flip? If the Repubs need him, he’ll flip. And he’ll make a fortune off it. I’m pretty sure that dude can be bought. That’s if he’s the dirtiest of whores that I suspect him to be. I’ve been calling him Benedict Lieberman for months now, you just remember where you heard that first too, eh kiddies? Damn skippy.

Santorum goes down! Hah! Deserve it. Good riddance. Total jerk. Prototypical Far Right lug. Won’t miss you one bit, you dick. Number three Repub leader in the Senate eats it big time.

At precisely 9:11 (what th-) CNN makes the call that the Dems will be the Majority Party in the House. Did you know that the number 11, in numerology is one of the most powerful numbers? Know why? It is said to represent change...but as I said, CNN bases predictions at least partially on exit polling, which doesn't account for the 'Republican Fix Factor', which translates to outright election robbery.

Having extremely dirty thoughts about Dana Bash, horse-face or no. Where's Paula at? She check out early? Any net nudies of Paula out there? Surprised myself when she popped into my mind during a latenight tug sesh. Gave her a thumb in the bum. And she loved it...

Hey, here's something funny: 947 registered voters in Dagget County, Utah. The funny part? A 2005 census stating a population of 943. That's a 102% voter turnout! Interrrrresting.

All for now. This night is far from over but I'm so drunk I'm nearly blind. Shoulda gone stimulant. Tactical error, Sensey! Shit, man! Ah fuck it, nobody said this was going to be easy.

We are, after all, bloggers.

-iSense

This Election, Not of Theft but Robbery

2007-02-17T10:58:00.000-08:00

Because theft is a stealthy thing that happens in the inky pitch of night when noone is around to mark it; you just wake up and it’s gone. This election is hardly that. This one is of robbery, the kind that breaks down your door, laughs maniacally as it takes what’s yours with a mocking whisper of “what’re you gonna do about it, bubba.” Well, what indeed? Me? Oh, you know. Ol’ Sensey’s just tryin’ to Live his Life eight seconds at a time. As per. And keep an eye on this impending mockery of Democracy, throw pebbles at it from a safe distance. Mock it though remain powerless but to watch. It’s my favourite show right now. What’re you watchin’ Citizen? And what’s it about?

And the show I’m watching ain’t about whether the Democrats can take back the house and finally provide some kind of balance against this hideous Far Right orgy of corruption, slack assedness and violence. Sure, it’s in there somewhere but it’s not the main story and it’s not the Real Question. So what is?

And things just keep getting weirder, as promised. Like what? Like the head Religio-Nutcase in the WhiteHouse is nailin’ male hookers and taking meth! What a hoot! It never stops! What, you thought it was gonna stop with KidFucker Foley? Who’s next in this Great Far Right Masquerade of the Grotesque? Haven’t seen any dead hookers yet, but after the drugs and the pedophilia you know they can’t be too far behind, right? You damned skippy. Heard it here first. Nero’s New America is scandal in bulk. Chew on that, bitches. Hah!

And you just know Rummy and Cheney’s got bodies someplace. Right? A swack of them. Whole White House is prob’ly lousy with them. When found will blame on the Democrats. Or the janitor that found them. Or their own sainted Aunt Petunia’s. And probably get away with it. Again. And Bush’ll tell ‘em they’re doing a ‘super’ job or something. Personally, I’d like to see him try ‘stupendous’. Dubya’s coup de grace as far as language butchery.

But the question, Sensey? Surely we all know it, by now? Course you do.

Can they steal enough to hold the house. The only question in this election. The answer? Well…can they?

But you’ll never see it on any set of CNN’s stats or tickers. And the talking heads have precious little to say about it, thus far at least. I want to hear ‘em say this election is getting stolen. Just like the last one. I’m holding out for that fleeting second where a talking head ignores the rules and belts it out there and just like that you have a few seconds of Truth in your media, just like you always, always wanted. Slim chance on that one, not these scabrous whores and cruel villains of the Big Media, the more than wilful manufacturers of Consent and Control and the All Important Maintenance of the Status Quo. Nevertheless, it’s remains the question on everybody’s mind, at least those in the know, by no means the majority.

And can they get away with it? Not such an easy trick these days. The Citizens seem awakened as of late. Yes, they do. Maybe not so much the same citizenry that slept their way into a couple wars and a whole slew of lost Constitutional Rights. Maybe that Citizenry is awakening around this election and remembering that the right things actually kinda sorta matter and deserve something a little bit closer to their FULL FUCKING ATTENTION. One hopes. I hope. The whole world has a stake in this.

Hmmmmmm. Hope. A strange feeling. And around what? Democrats? No. Not them, not at all. The People. It is in that way my Hope lay, always. What do you say?

Right. Intense bullshit pending. You’ve been warned. You’re about to hear a big shitload about Hussein getting the death penalty and that’s Proof Positive of All Things Iraq. How’s that for your November surprise? World safer! Live worldwide coverage of Saddam Hussein’s date with a bullet or twenty! Makes for some great T.V, I can tell you that much! Say what you will about the Conservatives but they certainly know how to put on a fine show. Hey Deorre, who called 'Saddam's head exploding in a crimson mist' as November surprise? Was it Keywoman1? I know I said Osama. Or an Iran bombardment. Did we make a wager on all this? I was drunk. I promise nothing.

Actually, check that. I'm still holding out for a Bay of Tonkin style 'missile strike' from Iran as the big November surprise. See! We're under attack! Been so all along!

Peace Y'all. Out of Iraq and into Selma.

-iSC

p.p. I were running? Abu Graib and Katrina, hit 'em right in the face with it.

RandomMP3age: “Painted Black,” the Rolling Stones

Startin’ a Band

2007-02-17T10:43:00.000-08:00

Many of my best friends have been musicians. Starting to push through for me. Feel confident singing in front of people, for the first time, ever. Always knew I could at least hold a tune but was nervous. Been through so much in this life that I don’t care anymore. This blogging experience had added to that, too. Always hid my writing. Never thought it was good enough. Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t but I just don’t give a shit anymore. And I get feedback. And some people tell me that they really like my stuff and I play it all cool but it matters to me. And some people really, really hate my stuff and that matters to me almost as much. To Hate is to Care enough to Work Yourself into a Lather. Which means maybe I struck a chord. My the Final, Ugly Truth of the Age piece had to do with it too. Stopped caring if they’d kill me for telling the Truth. The Truth is bigger than me, a force unto itself, second only to the Immortal Change, so by all means spirit me away and do what you will with my corporeal form. I couldn’t give a shit. I did my part.

Speaking of Change: Facing huge opposition from all quarters, George ‘Dubya’ Bush might just be acknowledging that Iraq is turning into this huge, fucked up mess that the rest of the world has been seeing for years. But how does this play with all his insufferable and intractable “we will not back down, we will stay the course, we will not cut and run,” talk? Simple! Just deny you ever said it. Right?

Direct Georgie quote as of a coupla days ago: "Well, hey, listen, we've never been 'stay the course’…”

Wha…? Oh! I guess…you never…said all that stuff. Stuff like “"We will stay the course until the job is done, Steve, and the temptation is to try to get the President or somebody to put a timetable on the definition of getting the job done. We're just going to stay the course."
-George ‘Dubya’ Bush at a press conference, December 2003

But what does this with starting a band, Sensey? Christ, you are a rambler, ain’t you? Starting a band is about Life and Adventure, politics is about Cynicism and Deception. So what do you wanna write about? Right. A band. Yeah. Guess what I mean to say is, this WritingUp thing, this blogging deal lent me the courage to sing to others. Hey, shit, ain’t it the same thing, anyways? For you? Not shooting for Rock Superstar or anything, I just want to be able to play a few tunes in the bars.

Speakin’ of a few tunes…

"And so we've got tough action in Iraq. But we will stay the course,"
George ‘Worst President Ever and Most Dangerous Idiot in History’ Bush, April 5th, 2004

"And my message today to those in Iraq is: We'll stay the course." Apr. 13, 2004

"And that's why we're going to stay the course in Iraq. And that's why when we say something in Iraq, we're going to do it." Apr. 16 2004

Somehow in there, they were never actually about ‘staying the course’. Love to have this all explained to me. I’m a simple man. But fuck all that. Been puttin’ a few tunes together and playin’ em at parties and people are having fun. So fuck it, we're startin’ a band. We develop it. Shootin’ for bar scene alone. Anything comes beyond that is icing on the cake. It’s about realistic, achievable goals at the thirties, tell you that much.

Can’t wait to name the thing. Will keep a list on this page, maybe. And will take suggestions. Check back regularly and often. Get those hits up. Looking to break ten bucks on Adsense.

Many of my best friends are musicians. Always have been. And I think many of them have always thought I might emerge as a front man. It was like I had to get away from them to bring it out of me. But I can do it now. And when I’m ready, I will see who amongst them want to make a run at it. Big dreams, High Hopes in Times of Chaos and Distress. Maybe it’s all sublimation. Maybe that’s what this blogging thing has been too. Some of it, anyways.

"We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq." August 2005

"We will stay the course." August 2006

"Well, hey, listen, we've never been 'stay the course’…'”

So what’s going on here? Based on these latest developments, I think we all have to rule out that Georgie’s simply a little confused. I mean, he is, to be certain, and has been all his life. That much is obvious. But even stupid people know what they believe. Just ask the Radical Religious Right! No, it’s not because he’s stupid (though he is, and this can’t be stressed enough), stupidity on its own doesn't cut it in this case. Ultimately, whoever you are and whatever your political leanings you have to decide something on GWB: he’s EITHER FULL OF SHIT OR INSANE!!! OR BOTH!!! So, three choices there.

I’m sure you know which way I’m leaning.

Rock and Roll, Citizens!

-iSC

NonRandomMP3age: “Love Her Madly,” the Doors.

p.p. Just found the Giants-Bucks game. All is Bliss. Prediction right here and now: the Bears will not get by the Giants in the playoffs. You heard it here first. Mark it and write the motherfucker down.

Kidfu*ker Foley and the Shattered Myth of the Republican Moral Authority

2007-02-17T10:39:00.000-08:00

“These were the years when the US parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula - a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater…”

-Matt Taibbi, “Time to Go! Inside the Worst Congress Ever” Rolling Stone Magazine

Say what you like about Monica and the blue dress but at least Clinton liked chicks! Grown up ones! Jesus shuddering Christ! What, on earth IS NEXT from these HIDEOUS FIENDS?!? They made Kidfucker Foley (R) a co-chairman of the House Caucus on MISSING and EXPLOITED CHILDREN, and in time, Republican officials right up to and including J. DENNIS HASTERT (R), the SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE knew precisely what his interests were, knew precisely what he was doing and yet actively CHOSE to DO NOTHING to stop it, let alone bring the sick dick to justice! They let him keep a post that he would INEVITABLY use to his kidfucking advantage! Yes sir, pedophiles around their world rub their palms with envious glee at that one, the quintessential dream post for Kidfuckers like Foley and they LET HIM KEEP THE JOB! Which to me, means they facilitated it, no? Which is aiding and abetting kidfucking, yes? Which means, by proxy, a good swath of the Repubbies are Kidfuckers too! That’s as fucked up as it gets, Citizens. I mean, sure, there’s probably ways you could have equally fucked up your stewardship of the nation and its most vulnerable, but I’m gonna say you can’t possibly surpass it.

An Ugly but Necessary Prediction: there will be more kids. Hate to say it, probably some dead bodies too. Mark my words, though I loathe them. Thing is, the level and universality of Republican crime on the Hill is such that I feel like, well, how can there not be at least a couple ‘a bodies in the mix? They’ve done everything else.

Officially as bad as it gets. Can’t be topped. The culture of corruption that exists in Washington under the Republican dominated Congress, the Executive and Judiciary branches is legendary and of historical significance. The Clinton impropriety is erased, or rather finally exposed for what it really was: utterly meaningless. Bill bust any laws when he fired great loads all over Monica and her little blue dress? Nope. Both were consenting adults. Right? Which means all that bullshit and ballyhoo about a presidential blowjob has finally been ‘put to bed,’ forever. And it’s about goddamned time.

But there’s a vote coming up, some say. Things will change. Yes, things will change, but how much? This is what I said before the last election: with widespread cheating and paper-trail free ballot machines (which only makes sense if it's yer buddies that supply and install the machines) we will have no way of having any idea what the real vote results are. No way of knowing. That was in 2004. Has anything changed since then? Nope. Nothing has. If anything, more controls are in place to ensure that however America decides to vote on Election Day, the Repubbies can generate whatever numbers they wish.

Yes Virginia, I’m saying right now the Repubbies can win whatever they want to in November. Whatever they want to. And a compliant, sleeping populace will allow it just as they did in 2004. Or will they? Has Kidfucker Foley, the Iraq War Lead-up Lies and the utter assault on the Constitution of the United States of America (amongst soooooooo many other things, I mean, c’mon, who has time to list them all?) finally took hold in the minds of the People? Has the threshold been met that converts lemmings back into Citizens? Me, I’m not so sure but hey, by all means, prove me wrong.

Want to not be a lemming? All you can do if you’re an American citizen and living in the US right now is take part in the process. Not only vote but volunteer in the process. And watch EVERYTHING like a MOTHERFUCKING HAWK!!! Register any impropriety by either side and KEEP SHOUTING FROM THE HIGHEST MOUNTAINTOP UNTIL IT'S BEEN ADDRESSED. It's called a class action lawsuit, if needs be, whenever and wherever your Democracy is being tampered with. Your Democracy needs that right now like you need air and I need a strong drink.

Keep your eyes on the skies Citizens, I suspect the November Surprise is an Impending NeoCon Fear Injection. Keep those cell-phone cams at the ready and record everything. EVERYTHING.

Right. All for now.

-iSenseChange

p.p. I am hereby endorsing Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012. If he or someone like him doesn’t get into the WhiteHouse by that time then America is hopelessly doomed, if it ain’t already. More of the same means the utter destruction of America which will probably bring a good chunk of the world with it. Which is why I have to give a fuck. And so should you. Period.

NonRandomMP3age: “Imagine,” a Perfect Circle

These Sheep Bite Back

2007-02-17T10:36:00.000-08:00

And the Democrats are gonna save the day? HAH! How truly awful do the Republicans have to get before the Democrats look like heroes? The Constitution is on Life Support, it’s gotta be said, with no filibuster in sight and nary a raised voice, I’d say the Dems have their hands on cord, poised to pull the plug on it as much as anyone else. And didn’t something like 14 of them vote in favour of it? That’s 13 in addition to that American Fink of Finks, Joe ‘Benedict’ Lieberman, the proverbial hammerhead shark in wolf’s clothing? But what of the sheep? This is politics, sweetie. The only sheep involved are you and me.

The Dems ain’t nobody’s saviours but isn’t it pleasant to think so? No sir, the problem cuts a little deeper than that. Now’s the best time to get an understanding of that. Your two big choices both suck. Right? You got that yet? Maybe right now you have to vote Dem because anything else risks perpetuating this bizarre and hideously Apocalyptic run of the Radical Rightwing, but now’s a good time to understand that the two party system is giving you two choices that are really the same choice, the Party of and for the Rich. Which would be alright if everybody was rich, because then it would be the type of government that Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin built –by and for the People, in case you forget, don’t blame you, such good television lately- instead of this hideous Greedfest that has grown in it’s place.

But piss on all that. I’ve decided that the key for me is to return to my more natural State of Mind, a few days where I just don’t give a fuck about anybody but me. I lived that way for years, why not now? If the whole shitheap is gonna go up in flames why not have a little fun? That’s what they were doing in Germany in the late thirties, same bloody deal, I can tell you that much. Berlin becomes Edgeville as those ‘in the know’ realize the scene is deteriorating into War and Fascism and decide to get all fucked up at big, weird parties, and their garish freakshow lives becoming the zeitgeist for everybody during that strange time when everyone knew, at some level, that their government was Making a Play at something and the Citizenry had better Play Ball. Learn about it, try to stop it? They’ll kill you. Probably torture you first. What do you do when you know exactly how bad it is and have an inkling of exactly how awful it can get but you can’t do anything about it?

You throw a party. Which is what we did! A big one! A hat party. Threw it on a Sunday night so all the waitresses in all the clubs could make it. And all their friends. And it was a mad rip, a damned fine scene. The authentic Vietnam war era helmet was a natural, with a pair of Elvis shades. Busted out “Stuck in the Middle with You" (Steeler’s Wheel) in front of my largest audience yet and absolutely nailed it and later absolutely nailed one of the waitress girls and the friend of hers that I ‘just had to meet’. Or meat. Hell of a night, any way you look at it. Maybe one of the best ever.

Dropped OneForce off in the Jungfraus ‘bout a month ago. He has his Magnum Opus in front of him, knows exactly what to do and how to get there and I envy him for it. Mine remains a mystery. Ideally it’s the Cantos, but they don’t come to me very easily right now. Satirical poetry in the Epic form cannot emerge from a source of pure rage and no whimsy. You just end up shouting. And breaking shit. But everything rhymes.

Got a bit of posse again. Good deal. Been running solo for a long time. Nature of the Beast. And the biz. Gonzo writer on the run was fun and frenetic, but in the end it takes a lot out of you. Fucks with your equilibrium. All Yin no Yang. Or vice versa.

So there you have it. Do with it what you will. If anything. And watch out for one another folks. Things are happening. And do me a favour, if you would, Citizens; just one night this week turn off that television. Talk with your friends. Your family. Your loved ones, whomever they might be. Ask ‘em where they think the world is going. Ask ‘em if they think anything can be done about it. I still say there can, I say that some of these sheep bite back. But I also know myself to be a Fool.

Peace and Love, Citizens. OR ELSE!

-iSC

p.p. Google the word 'failure'. You guys hear about this? Heh heh.

Quotable Quotes: Inre 2/3 of the "Axis of Evil" F@#k Up

2007-02-17T10:34:00.000-08:00

"All Iranians would vote for Bush if they could. In three weeks, he struck down our worst enemy, against whom we lost a million dead during the eighties. Even better, he went on to make Iraq an Iranian province!"
-Iranian Oil Minister

George 'Dubya' Bush, making America's enemies incalcuably stronger since 2001.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

-iSC

My Friends Call Me Hal. You Can Call Me Mr. Burton. Mr Darth Burton.

2007-02-17T10:30:00.000-08:00

“War is the art of conquering at home.”
-Tom Paine, 1776

Dick Cheney, former Halliburton CEO cleared the air once and for all on Meet the Press, in September of ’03. He’d cut all financial ties. None of any sort. Which is good, because as we all know, it’s extremely important to be vigilant of these things. You gotta watch out for what those goddamned Liberal sissies often call a “Conflict of Interest.” Certainly all politicians are egregious crooks, but it’s important that the APPEARANCE of IMPROPRIETY be hidden at all costs. Good for the herd. Lemmings intuitively know of impending cliffs but despise talking or even thinking about them. And who can blame them? Certainly not you, right? Right.

WHAT HALLIBURTON GETS FROM DICK: YOUR TAX DOLLARS

More than $15 billion dollars worth of business personally handed to Halliburton in no-bid contracts from the American government since Cheney took charge –I MEAN became vice president- contributing to a 379 percent increase in profit from the day Dick and Dubya took office in 2000. In 2005, Halliburton recorded a profit of $1.1 billion, the largest profit ever recorded for this 86 year old ‘mom and pop’ kinda company.

WHAT DICK GETS FROM HALLIBURTON: BIG CHUNKS OF CASH, ALSO KNOWN AS YOUR TAX DOLLARS

Here’s what the appropriately named Dick had to say about it:

"Since leaving Halliburton to become George Bush's vice-president, I've severed all of my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind."

Retirement package so he could go and become the evilest “Vice” President in History: 20 million smackers. Cash bonus ‘forget-me-not’ on top of that, right before he got sworn in: 1.4 million smackers. Now, here’s the part that burns me, you ready? The hits just keep on comin!
2001 they gave him $205,298!
2002: $162,392!!
2003: $178,437!!!
2004: $194,852!!!!
2005: $211,465!!!!!

That seem like some kind of financial interest to you? You getting hundred thousand dollar envelopes in the mail lately? I’m still waitin’ for my six bucks from Adsense!

So, what does it all translate down to? They keep giving him cash (yours) and he keeps giving them deals (no bid style, so, your money and lots more of it than it should be). There’s never been a clearer example of a ‘conflict of interest’ in the history of human governance, ever, and nothing I’ve said here is in any way deniable. This is the pure, ugly, unvarnished Truth and I’d love to see debated by one of these last, remaining Rabid, Redneck Religious Righties. Can anyone, anywhere justify this? Even Dick himself couldn’t do it and that’s why he just told ol’ senator Leahy to go fuck himself in 2004. “Go fuck yourself.” That's a direct quote. all you history buffs. Pass that little pearl on to the kiddies! Might as well have been addressed to every American taxpayer, and, in the final analysis, to the Founding Fathers themselves. Go fuck yourself America, and all that you stand for. An adequate synopsis, I think, of the perspective of the Veep. Wouldn’t you say? Anybody think different? Anybody? If yes, why? By all means explain yourself. I'd love to hear it.

Ah yes. Lemmingdom. Never mind.

All this? Still going on. You know this, right? Obviously the man is a Pirate. In the old days they’dve tarred and feathered him. Or worse. Today? Well, what, exactly, is happening today? Figure that one out and you’ve figured out America’s Biggest Problem. Ol’ Sensey ain’t gonna lay it all out out you but I will give you a clue: It has more to do with you than them. And it always has. Which, of course, might also imply a little responsibility.

Dja get that? Never mind. Tired. One can only holler “CLIFF!” for so long.

Good luck to you. Those that deserve it anyways.

-iSense

p.p. Get a haircut, would you?

Citizen's Note #11: Defense Against Lemmingdom

2007-02-17T10:28:00.000-08:00

“Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed ...and... whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government ...and... when a long train of abuses and usurpations...evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

-The Declaration of Independence ratified by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.

A healthy reminder of the courage of your ancestors and your duty as a Citizen from the Good Folks at the SenseChange Center for Positive Change. Thanks and have a GREAT day.

Your America: Now, Officially, A Fascist State

2007-02-17T10:25:00.000-08:00

"Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume."
-Thomas Jefferson, 1798

Seig-howdy, fellow Citizens! How y’all doin’? Jesus H, strange days abound in this War on Information, days you or I never imagined, wouldn’t you say? Should we get right down to it? I think we should. After all, there’s little, perhaps no Time left.

Whatever America was once, it is no more. It is something else. Something darker. And it just keeps getting worse.

Dubya blustered, Congress acquiesced and before our very eyes (those of us that can be bothered to watch) yet one more decent piece of America's Constitution is rendered irrelevant, or ‘quaint’ in the NeoCon parlance: The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which includes the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. Translation? Imprisoned people get a chance to prove their innocence in a court of Law. That’s gone. History. No appeals nor judicial oversight neither.

And all on the say of a President that a majority of the American people don’t trust and that the wider populace of the world think is a lying, evil fucktard of a man. Well, this fucktard and his 'handlers' now have the right to declare anyone they please as an illegal combatant and make that person disappear forever, in his own country or any other.

Spend all the time you want on the definition of Terrorist or Enemy Combatant, what keeps me up nights is the definition of “aiding” said Terrorist or Enemy Combatant. Did not Dick Cheney very recently say that people that speak out against America’s involvement in Iraq, the ideas of this Administration or even vote for Democrats are in fact aiding the terrorists? Am I wrong? How many examples would you like? They say something like this nearly every day!

Again, by all means call me a loony but shit man, you’re gonna have to go ahead and show me how the wording of the document prevents this or future presidents from imprisoning whomever, wherever, forever. By all means, show me! Please! Go right ahead! I could use a good night’s sleep.

Did you know this most recent piece of legislation now allows the American Government to arrest and disappear and torture of anybody on earth, regardless of nationality? No evidence required, no judicial oversight, no trial, no appeal, no nothing at all? It’s all there. They can do whatever to whomever, wherever and forever.

Again; somebody, anybody, please, explain to me how this is not the case. Show me how the legal wording of the document itself proves that what I suggest is not now the case. I’ll be right here. Pretending to drool on myself. Because I think signs of Intelligence will be frowned upon in this Brave New Orwellian World Order of ours.

Freaked yet? Have I said too much or not enough? If you ain’t Freaked you’re a gerbil. Keep runnin’ on yer wheel and maybe they’ll never have reason to take you. Or yours. And never wonder again at how a populace let the Nazi Party rise to Power. Their experience is now yours. Just a different label, in the end.

Best of luck out there. Me, I’m thinking about joining the Hell’s Angels, if they’ll take me. Say what you want about them, at the very least they always knew the whole thing was Full of Shit and wanted No Truck With It. Turns out they were right.

I usually tell you to keep yer eyes on the skies or yer heads down and yer peckers up but I don't know what to tell you to do anymore. Shit's fucked, Citizens, at this phase that's all I can say that I am entirely certain of. I never thought they could have taken it this far. Too far, History will undoubtedly say.

-iSenseChange

p.p. Don't know how much longer they will allow me to say these things.

RandomMP3age: "The End," by 'the Doors'. I swear.

From the General’s Desk: the Gonzo Letters

2007-02-17T10:20:00.000-08:00

Greetings Gonzites, your General iSense here, ready to serve. But serve what? The eternal question. To you. To whit: What, if anything, do we do next? Where do we go from here and for what? And perhaps most importantly, who’s paying for all this? Not me, I can tell you that much. Never! HAH!

First and foremost, we’ve stepped up our act in this WritingUp gig. Yes sir. Brand new sit-choo. What am I talking about? It’s called the Gonzo Letters. It’s primarily for that particular international consortium of miscreants and ne’er-do-wells known throughout the blogging world –so, everywhere- as the Gonzo Warriors, but I think anybody can play. Because it’s so easy. And fun!

I know what yer sayin.’ Yer sayin’ "Oooh, but what is it Sensey? Why, I do declare I can hardly breathe until I fahnd out!” Well hold onto yer goodies, Petunia, cuz Ol’ Sensey’s gonna lay it out to you! It’s called ‘the Gonzo Letters,’ and it’s already started.

The idea came to me whilst taking a gut-shuddering dump and reading a copy of HST’s 'Fear and Loathing in America.' Many of my greatest ideas come to me in that way, in the biffy with my pants around my ankles, perhaps even whistling a tune and then PLOP, an ideer, just like that. You know what I’m talking about. Anyways…

The Gonzo Letters. The deal is this: Hunter’s style of covering the story was becoming part of the story himself. Many of his books are actually just compendiums of correspondence between him and anybody that crossed his path of interest, political or no. And the consortium, sublime as it was with his wild ramblings is made all the moreso with the scope and range of folks he actually ended up corresponding with. Writers, politicians, celebs, you name it.

“But what does that have to do with lil’ ol’ me, Mister Sensey?” you ask, and rightfully so. Answer?

I say we initiate a correspondence of our own. To all sorts of folks. Think about it: We all come in here and write blogs about this, that and the other. We think this person or situation is particularly great, this person or situation is particularly awful etc and whatnot and whatever. Let’s fire these likes, dislikes, Hopes and Fears off to the Real World itself, to those folks that the stories are about and by doing so become a part of the story itself. That friends, is Pure Gonzo. In it’s Rawest.

And collect them form letter responses! And post ‘em on yer blog! That’s GOLD! SO often these form letters show how little people or corporations (hmmm, start writing letters to companies. I like it. A lot. Hmmmmmm) care about letters from the public.

I’ve begun. My first letter was to the cop that pulled over Willie Nelson’s tourbus and busted him for dope. And mushrooms, it seems. My next letter was to to Willie himself, offering my support and an honorary position in the Warriors. I don’t know if either camps will ever respond but I laughed my ass off at sending that Nelson letter and am still laughing as we speak. And I MEANT EVERY WORD I SAID.

KeyWoman1’s doing it. She fired off a very clear, concise and intelligent letter to The New York Times, The New York Daily News and The New York Post about marijuana legalization. Fired it off to the papers then cut and pasted into her blog. Will they ever print it? Who knows? But if you never step up to the plate how you ever gonna hit a home run? Or taste champagne? Or get a blowjob?

I see Quiddity doing it also. She wrote a letter to Alberto Salazar, her roach of a congressman, expressing how she felt about the dude voting in favour of American Torture and then told him what she thought about him extending the term Terrorists to protesters, given his vote of the previous day. She fired the letter to the good congressman and then cut and pasted the letter into her blog. Piece o’ cake, easy as pie. Cake and pie. And chicken! Right!

Seems Johnny Canuck is hip to this vibe as well. He wrote a steaming evisceration of the Pope for his advising Canada's government on how it sould run the country. Johnny told him where to go and how to get there and is firing it off to the Vatican as we speak. To what end? Who knows, but I think we can all agree, to something.

There are others. There is more. There is you. Who do you think deserves a Gonzo Letter? Try not to threaten or get yourself sued, that’s my advice, and I like to use a wide variety of ever-shifting pseudonyms. But do what you like. Have fun. Will intro it in this space, if you like, just gimme a heads up.

As always, I assume responsibility for Nothing. And get a shave, would you? Jesus.

Then we lash the whole fucking thing together and try to get it edited and just maybe published. See that coming? Why not? Am I nuts? Probably! Definitely! But I find if you smile and nod a lot, NOBODY CARES! Right?!?

Right.

All for now,

-General iSenseChange of the Gonzo Warriors

p.p. Everybody, it seems, has an email. Willie had one! I betcha all sorts of Radical Repubbies have ‘em too. It’s hip these days. Make use of it. Send ‘em something. But always remember: keep yerself out of the clink, good Christ, especially now. Right. As you were!

p.p. What about a Gonzo Warriors space at blogger.com or MySpace or whatever. A groupspace? An ideer, anywho.

RandomMP3age: “Hey You,” Pink Floyd

The Gonzo Letters: Hey Willie

2007-02-17T10:19:00.000-08:00

“It is the Just man that disobeys the Unjust Law.”
-St. Thomas Aquinas

Hey Willie,

Will be covering your story extensively for the Gonzo Warriors, an international consortium of miscreants and ne’er-do-wells that find within them the primordial spunk to gurgle to the surface when Folk Heroes get pinched by the Law for smoking the Good Weed. My first report, entitled ‘Dear Trooper,’ is now being forwarded, my secretary assures me, to the Officer who busted your tourbus the other day. Nothing that can get anybody sued, I assure you, just some good natured fun at the expense of the first cog in the judicial machine that continues to enforce an Unjust Law.

Feel free to check it out, if such things interest you.

Beyond that, well, I’m thinking you might be the crucible that this marijuana criminalization thing might bust upon forever, man. Many, myself included, consider you a Legend and a Hero, which means maybe, just maybe people will start to question the Marijuana issue in ways they haven’t before. I say fight it. I know your old, but shit! Sometimes that’s what heroes do.

Whatever you do, you of course have my full support on this. I have no money but write a scorned letter like a man possessed. Furthermore, I’d be tickled blue if you’d consider an honorary membership in the Warriors. We seek truth, speak our minds and fear nothing, a rarity in these times of nearly omnipresent bullshit. Have you or yours fire me off an email if such things interest you and I hope to hear from you.

Right, all for now.

Sincerely,
Manfred Duke, aka General iSenseChange of the Gonzo Warriors

emailed to Willie Nelson. And his band. And crew. 19:50, 24-11-06

The Gonzo Letters: Dear Trooper

2007-02-17T10:16:00.000-08:00

Just thought I’d take the time to thank you for protecting the Public Good, specifically, in tracking down and ticketing Folk “Legend” Willie Nelson for his egregious drug use. It’s unfortunate you’re not given the authority to throw the man the beating his seventy some-odd year old ass so richly deserves! Only way to learn ‘em!

Yes sir! For too long these artists and writer types have flouted the Law in this regard. I read an article the other day about some scientific analysis of a few pipes found in Billy Shakespeare’s pad and apparently there were traces of not only this evil weed but of the cocaine as well! And then you know what he did, Trooper? He went and glorified it in one of his tunes (or sonnets, as this doper liked to call them) referring to ‘compounds strange’ and a ‘noted weed’.

Now back in Billy’s day, well, they knew how to handle drug offenders: torture and death by the Church of England! It’s an idea whose time has come again, I think you and I are in agreement on that, Trooper. Don’t fret, I’m sure the NeoCons are working towards this sort of enforcement as we speak, it’s probably Patriot Act III or IV. And about bloody time! Amen, sir!

Billy Shakespeare got away with it, but the buck stops at Willie Nelson and rightfully so! I’m thinking the thing to do is throw the book at him, teach the fucker a lesson. I were you, I’d be looking at taking down Dylan next, or that Keith Richards idiot. Get enough of them at the same time, the same prison, imagine the Art that you yourself will have spawned! I’m thinking recording sessions, DVDs, t-shirts and whatnot. I know you’re gonna want to be in on this, I just ask you not to cut me out of the loop. This could be huge.

Feel free to contact me for this type of advice at any time, especially if you can catch more of these vicious doper artist fiends. This is a big opportunity for us but we must move quickly. Artists are a cagey bunch and once they get wind of our plans they’ll scurry to all points.

Right, all for now.

Yours,
Manfred Duke

NOTE TO WRITINGUPPERS AND ESPECIALLY GONZO WARRIORS: It is my fervent desire to send this missive to the trooper who has so courageously taken down Public Enemy Willie Nelson. Any ideas on where to send it? Everybody has email these days or maybe the cop-shop has a website or whatnot? I couldn't be more serious about this.

Friends, Bloggers, Fellow Gonzites: the Real Deal of the Early 2Ks

2007-02-17T10:12:00.000-08:00

The results are in and the fit has officially hit the shan: in the most hideous seizure of power since Dubya’s daddy secured the White House for him in 2000, one third of the leadership of the Gonzo Warriors, for good or ill, has fallen into the hands of yours Truly, iSenseChange, Distinguished Blogger of Note and Ruffian At Large. The inmates have been running the asylum for a long time now but never has it been so obvious as this. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m an odd man to give any semblance of power to without some notion of Consequence. Fuck it. Buy the ticket and take the ride, that’s what the Good Doctor would’ve said and it’s as applicable here as anywhere.

First and foremost, gonna want to take a look at the budget. I have an extravagant lifestyle and uncommon needs. And appetites! I’ll need a secretary, obviously, and preferably one I can nail. I’m at my very best when I’m getting routinely laid. Means I’m not jerkin’ off so much. HAH! A maid might become necessary as well. A Spanish one. Yeah. That’s great. Good start.

But enough on that! For now. Where are we at, precisely? A good question. Who’s left standing and who’s fallen by the wayside? Maybe the thing to do is formulate some kind of general roll-call or whatnot. The transient nature of bloggers on this site, coupled with the recent Gonzite civil war means yer never quite sure who’s…still…here. Stand up and be accounted for, fellow Gonzites or be written off as one of the fallen. You’ll be honoured in some capacity, I’m sure, but probably not by me. I’m a General for fuck’s sake!

Yes sir, a new era for the Gonzo Warriors, gone be the golden reign of SoKP, Slipshoes and CelebrityTalks. The only constant is change. Now it’s me. And two chicks. And not a baby-oil sprinkler system in sight. Yet. As I said, I have uncommon needs.

And goals!

Like what, Sensey?

Well, if we’re not firing up some kind of weird stunt to fuck with the squares then what, precisely, are we doing and how, precisely, are we Gonzo? Hunter always knew that we were headed for weird times but I think it was Winston Churchill who said it best, that ‘weird times call for weird measures’. Something to mull. Yes. I have a few ideas and of course, I’m open to suggestions. My door is always open. Except when my secretary is taking dictation. Your General iSense huffing back massive rails from her heaving cleavage to the strains of Iron Butterfly’s ‘In a Gadda Da Vida’ are very private moments that few but the genuine 2%ers can possibly wrap their more pliable minds around. All for the good of the cause! I’m under a lot of pressure with this thing. Call it a mental health break and be done with it. Leave a note or something.

But shit, deception is everywhere and you guys just made me a General in what I've been calling the War on Information and I want you to know I take this position seriously. My war is your war. I say we start fucking with that pimp Lou Dobbs and 'Satan Incarnate' (aka Bill O'Reilley) almost instantly. They like their little letters from the viewers eh? The Gonzites need to make a mark on these things. That's for starters and it's an absolute necessity.

Get active in some way or another and where possible, Gonzites, and I'm not even kidding. TV sucks these days anyways. Maybe the Sixties was just a dry fire after all, a practise shot for the Real Deal of the Early 2Ks. Bullshit is omnipresent and, perhaps more than ever before in human history, obvious to even the commonest of Man. Many things hinge on the next set of elections in America this November and the Repubbies are working hard to steal this one as well. Another dangerous unwinnable War with global implications -this time with Iran- looms just beyond the outcome.

There are things we can do, all of us, that must be done. The preservation of the freedom of the Internet is paramount, for even as we speak legislation is moving into place to give control of it over to the corporations, the same type of corporations that have so ruthlessly gutted the media. The end result is obvious to all but the lemmings.

Go here. Peruse.

SAVE THE INTERNET

Communication and Truth may be the only hope for mankind in these dark days. For those of us smart enough to see it coming, it is irresponsible and cowardly not to join the fray.

So stand up and be counted or live in Fear forever! This Gonzo thing, well, ol' iSense can't carry it on his own. It's what you, each of you, make it. Let's do some shit!

The Brave, the Strong: the Still Standing or the Brand Fucking New:
Celebrity Talks
Keywoman1
iSenseChange
Quiddity
Johnny Canuck
Wabbit Huntur
Pinhole
Deorre
the Geminian
Thorniest Rose
Free Radical
DanceLover
Fordrid the Slightly Savage
Born Sandy

Channeled From Beyond the Grave:Son of King Pharmacy

Right! Give yourselves a hand. Be sure to lube up and start with a finger or two. Go slow, at first. Heh heh.

Don't see yer name here? Respond to this blog and let us know, hell, let the whole DAMNED WORLD KNOW that you, friend, are the living, breathing personification of Raw Grit.

All for now.

- General iSenseChange of the Gonzo Warriors

p.p. Heard trephination’s making a comeback in a big way. All the kids in France are doing it. You drill a hole right into your skull and put like a big wedge of cork in it. They call it bung-holing. Noserings are for pussies now. Yep.

NonRandomMP3age: “Revolution” by the Beatles

Bar wisdom: “It’s okay to be fat. And it’s okay to be grumpy. But it’s not okay to be fat and grumpy.” Discuss.

Citizen's Note # 4016, inre the Impending "Vote".

2007-02-17T10:04:00.000-08:00

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything."
-Josef Stalin, ideological forefather to the PNAC's America.

NOTHING HAS YET BEEN FIXED SINCE DUBYA HACKED THE VOTE (TWICE!!!!!). EYES OPEN CITIZENS. INTENSE BULLSHIT PENDING.

The following reminder courtesy of the SenseChange Center for Positive Change. Thanks, and have a GREAT day.

The Gonzo Niche: The Form is the Style is the LifeStyle.

2007-02-16T17:59:00.000-08:00

I can’t tell you what I do is or isn’t Gonzo anymore. It’s all Gonzo. And Gonzo, it turns out, appears to be the style that will best encapsulate this latest Fall of Empire. Or is it the Impending Apocalypse. Or Renaissance? What? You don’t know? Take heart. No one does. Which is precisely the point: a situation changing as rapidly as ours coupled with the wildness and weirdness of it all requires writers on the cutting edge. Grit, or sand as my great Grandpappy probably never used to say. The form is the style is the lifestyle, and in the end, the Gonzo form, as the Good Doctor Hunter S. Thompson knew very well, may well be the ONLY WAY to encapsulate this, perhaps the Wildest and Weirdest of Ages, where the American Dream chokes itself to death with Greed, Corruption and Madness. Where else you gonna get yer news? The Press? HAH! PART OF THE PROBLEM! FINKS, ONE AND ALL! AND NEARLY EVERYBODY KNOWS IT!

Slinging back great tankards of Frangelico on the rocks and watching ‘Full Metal Jacket,’ in my opinion the greatest Vietnam war flick ever made. Sure, I get different things from ‘Apocalypse Now’, and ‘Platoon’ is what it is, but I don’t think any Nam flick can touch ‘Full Metal.’ You ever wonder about the next generation of films are gonna look like, based on the latest misguided and useless American War, Iraq Deux? I think about it all the time. Gonna be a lot of similarities, no avoiding it. On every level. I think that if I were a blogger worth a piss at all I’d be Over There, marking it all down for the ages, instead of here, as safe as can be expected in the PNAC age. But shit, I just don’t think it’s safe for white people of the unarmed variety Over There at all. May never be again.

“Personally, I think, uh... they don't really want to be involved in this war. You know, I mean... they sort of took away our freedom and gave it to the, to the gookers, you know. But they don't want it. They'd rather be alive than free, I guess. Poor, dumb bastards..”
- Private Eightball

But oh, how they would ramp up that Freedom speech during the Nam days, eh? Freedom for the Vietnamese. Freedom from Communism. Freedom. And yet, America lost, ‘Cut and Run’ as the NeoCon ChickenHawks like to say, none of whom ever fought a day in their lives. Yeah, well, fuck them. Fuck Dubya. Right in the ass. Fuck Cheney too. So much blood is all over their hands even as so much money passes into their hands.

Who but the Gonzites to accurately cover these Far Right cannibals? The wild and wooly-bully NeoConservative nutters. Don’t ever vote in the nutters. It’s just not supposed to happen. Democracy is Democracy but you’re never to vote in the nutters. How is it this was never deemed important for us to see? Which means the MEDIA has to keep track of WHO THE NUTTERS ACTUALLY ARE. AND REPORT IT TO THE PEOPLE. The evidence was around. These guys were known and confirmed nutters in their own bloody circles and the PNAC document was AND IS there for all and sundry to view and shake their heads at. So where was our Press on this? What was more important? I want to know who the political nutters are next time, okay MEDIA? YOU’RE FUCKING PATHETIC!!! Wake up and GROW SOME BALLS!! STRAIGHTEN UP!! SELL ME the TRUTH, baby, I CAN HANDLE IT!!! Rat bastard chickenshit ARSLETARTS, the LOT OF YOU!

Whew. I keep shouting. Cursing. I know. I had a few people tell me of late that they like my stuff, hell, think some of it is important, if only I could curb the atrocious lingo. I had one fella tell me he has to scroll away from my stuff when his kid approaches, like he was looking at porn or something. Heh heh. I want to be your guilty pleasure. Other times I just want to howl at you. “Do you have to cuss so much, Sensey” he asked me. The answer is absolutely. Shit, man, you try writing this stuff and not cussing, not getting so angry that you fire your six foot bowstaff clear across your living room to where it now sticks out of the wall like an unexploded ballistic missile head, the latest in a string of offences that has long since torpedoed the damage deposit on the place. Fuck it! It’s a time to be angry you buncha sissies! Or acquiescent. Those are your only choices. Every day.

Dubya said, and I quote, that so long as he was President, America would remain in Vietnam. I mean, Iraq. (That was actually an honest fuck-up there, I swear). Which kinda leads to something. If you know that there is now nothing winnable for America in Iraq, and you know that each month the war is allowed to continue means a certain amount of American deaths (because nobody cares about the deaths of Iraqis, we all know this, let’s move on) and you know precisely how much longer Dubya will remain in presidency, you can tell how many more brave soldiers will die for absolutely nothing. The question, America, is this: how long do you let this man, totally divorced from reality as we all now know he is, drenched in blood and blood money as we all now know him to be, how long do you allow him to remain in power? And at what point is the blood on your hands too? Maybe it’s always been there, you just never knew. Now you know.

How can conventional writers hope to accurately cover this mangy scene? The NeoCon Nutters mismanaged Afghanistan, mismanaged Katrina, mismanaged Iraq…and now they want to mismanage Iran. Are you ready for this? Another one? Rummy yammering about Hitler and Fascism, equating Americans (well, the majority of you, anyways) as Nazi sympathizers and whatnot for wanting the troops out of the worthless muck of Iraq. They now actually want to hit Iran. Madness if they do it and madness if you let them. Period. But to a NeoCon nutter it all makes perfect sense. Cheney’s Haliburton stands to have another record year if they do, and it might be the only way nobody’ll notice how shit-awful things continue to get in Iraq. And in Afghanistan. And in America.

But this is some type of challenge, Sense, and here you go blaming the audience again. Or some of the audience. Back to the hoary beast. A blog in the gonzo form? Shit, isn’t that what I’ve been doing? I mean if I haven’t been very blatantly ripping off the good doctor Gonzo every time I blog, then, well, I’m not entirely certain what I’ve been doing. And I just bought a brand new pipe, I’ll have you know, in honor of the thing. First pull made me cough to beat the band and nearly sent me careening off the road. Which is good. Makes me respect it.

Jesus. Rambling. Put an end to this thing and fire it off, be done with the cocksucker once and for all. Be warned, I’ll not take a position of Generalship unless it entails little or no responsabilities ans unless the position has some teeth. I warn you right now, I haven’t the slightest clue what I’m gonna do with it, but I’ll push that stinking envelope, I kid you not. And fair warning, I’m saying it right now: I’m an odd man to give any sort of power to. Arbitrarily. Without some notion of Consequence. At the very least, you all get put on the range of NSA lists you’ll find old Sensey on, which means you're first to the gulags when the final rights are inevitably removed. Fear not. You’ll be in good company.

“You think we waste gooks for freedom? This is a slaughter. If I’m gonna die for a word, that word is poontang.”
- Animal Mother

Indeed.

-iSenseChange

p.p. Fordrid, I'm aware Hunter would have hemmed and hawed for weeks on this thing and then ended up handing in something entirely different. I expect points to be docked for me and everybody else that turns in their entries on time or even a week late. That is all. No shirking.

NonRandomMP3age: "White Rabbit" Jefferson Airplane

Soul of a Woman

2007-02-16T17:54:00.000-08:00

Enough ranting. Sleep takes hold again, enslavement to the corporeal form overpowers the hulking need to say something, to make some semblence of sense of everything that has gone on and is going on. All of a sudden I'm in a pool at some great big, swanky party, a massive band playing 'the Marriage of Figaro.' I look around.

Total absence of color. Black and white like some old movie. How did I get here? Who are all these people? Judging by their dress I am amidst the upper crust, but the feeling I have is that I am not here for social purposes.

I'm chatting with a large house cat who seems to have no issues with water, pools or swanky parties and I'm trying to get some kind of information from it, the details of which float just beyond my consciousness. Ginger, from Gilligan's Island floats in, her bounteous boobs gloriously bouyant. She sidles up to me, passes me a martini and gives me a little snuggle. That's it: I'm Bond. Nice. I could just have easily become Gary Coleman.

"You're some kind of detective, right?"

"Some kind," I respond, and for the purpose of the dream, become.

"Maybe you can help me, protect me?" She presses her grand peaches up against my chest and I nuzzle her neck, inhaling a delicious scent that I can't quite place. What is that scent?

"You just stick close, baby," I respond, "I'll take care of you." I take a sip from my drink and put my arms around her waist, picking her up a little and she squeals with delight. "You gotta name, or should I just call you Serendipity?"

"I'm Ginger!"

"Of course you are." So smooth, Mr. Bond! "Heh, heh."

"You know, Gilligan's Island?"

"Sure!" I don't care whose island it is. It ain't about "Gilligan's Island" at all at this point, it's all about "Ginger's Peaches" and I'm looking to co-star as soon as possible. Fuck Gilligan, it's MY fucking island. That scent again. What the hell is it? Maybe it's actual ginger I smell and this spicy tiger has the smarts to link the name and perfume. But it's not ginger, is it...no. Somewhere in the distance, a warning claxon goes off, just once.

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" she coos at me, tracing a finger down my chest.

"Nothing," I respond as the oversized housecat floats languidly by again, a sly look on its face.

It whispers at me casually, with a wink: "Beware the smart ones," it mews, "nothin but pain..." I splash some water at it, it hisses and paddles off.

"So, what's your concern, Miss Ginger?" I ask her and place a warm kiss right between her bikinied breasts. Another sip of the martini and it seems I'm getting a little dizzy. I'm pretty good at holding my liquor and damn near bullet-proof at it when a dame's in the picture. A warning claxon again, louder this time, longer. The music is changing, another tune, a strange one for an orchestra to play and like that smell I can't quite place the song, though I'm certain it hovers just barely beyond the range of my consciousness.

"It seems," Ginger says, "that my husband has some asshole poking around his concerns."

"Well, if you're one of those concerns, he could hardly blame a fella for wanting to poke around a little." As smooth as can be expected given that I'm barely able to stand anymore. It's no longer so much a sensual embrace as it is me clinging to her for my very survival. Her laugh is shrill as she escapes my grasp and saunters away, her deep eyes still staring into my being over her shoulder.

The music is overbearingly loud and the tune comes to me, it's some impossibly strange version of a Zeppelin tune, my own drugged up mind supplying Plant's lyrics:

"Been Dazed and Confused for so long it's not true.
Wanted a woman, never bargained for you.
Lots of people talk and few of them know,
soul of a woman was created below."

With the recognization of the tune my lazy mind finally synthesizes the situation: I'm not smelling ginger or even Ginger, it's almonds. Ginger, that fucking whore, has poisoned me.

"Hey, shit, dude!" I spurt at that damned oversized housecat I'd been chatting with, "you gotta help me! Call the cops! Call the Skipper, would ya! Call somebody, shit, I've been poisoned!"

The cat just laughs at me as I slip under the surface of the water and the last thing I hear before resting on the floor of the pool -I'll just rest for a second, just closing my eyes, really- is that cat's laughing mewl:

"I warned you about the smart ones!"

I wake up gasping for air on the floor of my living room and give my head a shake. Reality takes a beating again as I can still hear that crazy, tripped-out version of 'Dazed and Confused' in my mind in tandem with the real version that's playing on my alarm clock.

A hum-dinger, that one. I fire up a coffee and think about that dream, and, being an arm-chair dream analyst, I come up with what I come up with.

-iSenseChange

How to Stop the Rising, World-Beating Tide of Islamofascism

2007-02-16T17:49:00.000-08:00

Do Nothing, It Never Existed. One of Dubya’s boys made it up from whole cloth. Kinda like all them WMDs Saddam never had. Or like them connections Saddam and Al Quaeda never had. Or Dubya being from Texas. That kind of shit. Never existed, no basis in Reality. Made from whole cloth. Horse pucky. Chicken of the rubber variety.

Note to reader, whosoever you may be: Do not confuse IslamoFascism with Terrorism. By all means be afraid of Terrorism. That’s why it’s called Terrorism. Yes. Be, um, very afraid. Anyways…

911 scare you into doing whatever we say? What if the Muslims TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!! They’re COMING FRIENDS, and they’ve BROUGHT THEIR BOX-CUTTERS!!! Hope you SPEAK ARABIC!!! Trade in your G-strings for a totally amorphous BURKAH!! Look forward to the rest of your life, dressed up like a SACK OF POTATOES!! BITCHES!!! And what-not.

Ridiculous, I know. But I hear this all the time on this site and others like it. And on TV (granted, only really by the idiots at Fox. Or by Dubya). Like if we don't continue pouring in bodies and bullets at the MidEast then the Fundy Muzzies will rise and somehow aspire to the miraculous position of utter dominance over the far more powerful West, to the point that America's Citizenry will be forced to adopt the odious Way of the Dirty Arab, Forever.

It’s ridiculous. Take over the world. Please. Gonna be tough. Gonna need boats. Lots of ‘em. Got lots of boats? What about shitloads of planes and tanks and such? Got shitloads of planes and tanks and such? Shitloads of satellites and intel? What about ABSOLUTELY LIMITLESS FINANCIAL RESOURCES! Got ABSOLUTELY LIMITLESS FINANCIAL RESOURCES? I figger you don’t. I figger if the best way you’ve devised to fight your blood enemy (who’s firing at you with some of the most sophisticated weapons in the history of War) is by strapping dynamite to your Citizen’s freaking chests, I’m gonna hazard a wild guess that you most likely don’t have ABSOLUTELY LIMITLESS FINANCIAL RESOURCES. Which, you’re gonna need. Gonna have to feed a lot of soldiers. Buy shitloads of box-cutters. And what-not. That’s if you plan on INVADING, OCCUPYING and TAKING OVER THE ENTIRE WORLD.

Yeesh. Whole thing sounds so…I don’t know…Vietnamish? You remember Vietnam, right? The forces of Democracy had to meet head on with the raging Communist hoard, once and for all, with the Freedom of the Entire World at stake? Thank the baby Jesus we did and that we stopped ‘em cold, cuz well, what if we hadn’t? How’s yer Russian, comrade? Seriously. It was that close. But we stopped ‘em cold. Sorry? What’s that? We didn’t? What do you mean we never stopped the Communist advance in the jungles of Vietnam? Is this all some crazy Soviet mass thought experiment? Am I in the Matrix? Cool.

Did you know that Robert MacNamara, who served as Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War years once got into a fist-fight with his Vietnamese counterpart in a bar because they couldn’t agree on what the Vietnam war had actually been about? True story. Long after the conflict had ended. Vietnamese dude got all indignant. He’s like: “We were joining Communist China?!? Are you crazy? WE’VE FOUGHT THEM OFF IN THESE LANDS FOR CENTURIES.” Then they got into a fist-fight over it. Cuz they couldn’t agree with the cause. Cool, huh? Oh sure, scary as fuck, but a cool story.

I digress. Where was I? Ah yes. The evil Islamofascist scourge. It's not even correct gramatically. You need a fully functioning State to be Fascist. That's in the definition folks. It's how it works.

Do you need to wear underwear under a burkah? I went to a bar in a kilt once and I'll tell you, I had a blast that night. What a hoot. Easiest trip to the biffy you ever saw. Step up to the urinal, lift your kilt and you're off to the races. Had a woman put her hand up my kilt that night and I giggled like a schoolgirl. Can you blame me?

I guess the point is that I’m not telling you not to be afraid of terrorists. I’m not telling you not to be afraid of Islamic extremists. I’m not even trying to tell you not to be afraid of Muslims, dark people, your next door neighbour or circus clowns. I am telling you not to be afraid of the Rising Tide of World-Beating IslamoFascists. It was just the scariest thing the NeoCons could imagine to spring on you after the latest scandal or stupid decision.

THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC SERVICE BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SENSECHANGE CENTER FOR POSITIVE CHANGE. HAVE A GREAT DAY.

That is all.

-iSenseChange

NonRandomMP3age: "Everybody Knows," Leonard Cohen.

All Roads

2007-02-16T17:37:00.000-08:00

Up at four thirty to drop off a vehicle, return to the casbah, get our shit together.

I’m with Lucas and Rachel for this particular adventure. Supposed to be a couple chicks coming along which bodes well for old Sensey. We are to be together at 5:30 to make all the ferries, connections, directions and what-not. The chicks aren't there and we can’t wait for them. Rachel and Lucas look to me for judgement. Fuck it, I sigh. All roads lead to Rome. Same position I took about Tim’s week long waffling on whether he was gonna make it or not. He’s a guitar virtuoso and his axe will be sorely missed around the fire but what’re you gonna do? All roads lead to Rome and if he’s to be there he’ll be there. If he ain’t he won’t. We take off.

We’re hooking up for a weekend with some Hopis to whom I am acquainted for a mind-bending weekend at Rachel’s cottage. These folks travel around and offer vision-quests and sprititual transcendence for a hefty price, a nice dollar if you can get into it, to be sure. We are old friends so there is no charge and they too will seeking visions on this particular weekend.

Rachel laughs about something I said the night before at the party, said she wants to make it into a t-shirt. Somebody’d asked me something and I responded quite simply that I “admit and regret nothing,” before stumbling into an end-table and upending a full tray of drinks. Rather than getting pissed at me (and how could she) she went to the trouble of writing the expression down. Like I’d forget it. I liked the sound of it too.

Hanging on this big rock shelf that will be entirely erased with the tide before the end of the day. It is our haunt but only for so long and it is absolutely perfect. Little pockets of life within the rocks. Sublime. The perfect place for a vision quest. What I need. What I seek this day more than anything else.

Lucas bangs away at the guitar. He’s found it, the raw skeleton of ‘Folsom County Prison’ and I’d need no more than that. Did I not sing it all the way up that treacherous path through the mountains, racing in a pick-up truck to meet up with my old friends in the first place? Tim could nail the thing perfectly but Lucas is coming at it from a whole different angle and it's bloody perfect. Tim is not to be here, not now, and he ain't.

One of the girls (who’d made it up there after all, God love ‘em) tells me to sing it deeper. She doesn’t know. I’m singing young Johnny on this one. Meaning I’m gonna go deep but only where it really needs it. I bust it out and I’m nailin’ it and every time I go deep I look at that girl right in the eyes and sing it to her like she’s the only person who can hear me. Fuckin’ A. I think Johnny’d be proud ‘a me. Even if I do change a few words around here and there, like those folks in the train ain’t drinkin’ coffee but whiskey and smoking 'fat' cigars rather than 'big' ones. Think Johnny’d approve of that too, that he understood a little improv for effect.

The girls see a starfish, marooned and dried amongst the rocks and worry good naturedly about its survival. One tries to peel him off, to rescue it, and I stop her. It is a part of its Life. The tide will come in, in time soften up his shell, he will release himself from the rocks and return once again to the ocean. He’s just waiting for one of Life’s most reliable buses.

I conspire for a kiss. Tell you something, I don’t mind keepin’ it to myself. Personally. Do it all the time. Promise not to tell and never telling. Keeping it only between lovers. You? She is to meet me behind a big tree. Just a kiss, one kiss and one kiss alone. I swear upon it. We’ll see.

One of the girls seeks a rock shaped like a heart and I find it for her before she even finishes the sentence. It is thick and rough, like my own and it is as beautiful as it should be. It is a moment of magic, not between a Man and a Woman but between Man, Woman and Something Else. It is that Something Else that I seek to commune with on this day. If I am to make it with one or both girls then I’m certain that will happen, but transcendence of the Mortal realm, if only for a few fleeting seconds, is a tougher nut to crack and I seek nothing less. It has been too long.

Lucas is communing with the Hopis. He has a set of bongo drums and they have various instruments of percussion. The music stirs my heart, makes me feel larger than myself. I feel watched for a second and cannot shake it until I look across the inlet at a vast, black rock. It radiates a brand of energy that my mind is particularly hip to at the moment and I know that if my vision is to be met, this be a place of magic. I am to go there. Immediately. As I am now. I go.

I walk into the water, still clothed and begin my swim. It’s a long swim, burdened by clothing and sandals as I am, but the drums give me strength and make return impossible until I have met my vision, whatever it be. Tired at the half-way point, so tired I think of ditching my sandals for my own safety and survival then realize they could be used for my safety and survival instead. I would take them in my hands, transform them into paddles if I have to. But the beating of the drums keeps my strength, and I reserve this strategy for if and when I would truly need it.

At this point something large and white swims right beneath me and I have time to wonder what nature of beast it be. I haven’t an ounce of fear, not for even an instant. If this white thing, whatever it be were to drag me out to sea and eat me then that is my destiny. It is to be. See? My blood, bones and soul would never become closer to Oneness with the Great Ocean than being torn to bits at the teeth of some great and savage beast. All roads lead to Rome. Oneness. I’m struck there, floating on my back and knowing in my very soul that this was my lesson, my message I was and am supposed to learn on this day, the force and Truth of it making it undeniable. Lesson learned and I’ve not yet reached the Great Rock, which bodes well and I’ll tell you why.

The Gods don’t spend a whole lot of their Time throwing all sorts of lessons at you. Us Mortals are fickle and distracted easily. It may be an inevitable byproduct of our Mortality or we may just be numbskulls. Regardless, I assure you, the cosmos teaches its lessons to you one at a time. And guess what, folks; you’re fucked until you get it. You keep dating the wrong people, making the same mistakes and follow the same damn cycle over and over again til that lesson is learned and Change is made. I digress. Point is that my lesson was already learned and I hadn’t met my Vision yet or even reached the place of magic. The rock meant something more. Other things were possible.

There is a rare opportunity that Mortals sometimes have, my Hopi friends tell me, which is a communion of sorts. With the Gods. With God. With the Cosmos. It takes the right mind at the right Time and circumstance but it’s doable, has and does happen. If any mortal can, I have faith in myself that I too can. If not me, who? If not here, where? If not today, when?

I reach the shore and climb the face of it this obsidian behemoth. Where ocean meets sky I ride the rock like a steed into space and speak my piece:

“If there be a sentient Being more powerful than We of the Mortal realm and if that Being deigns at times to commune with Man, I ask for such communion. I swear before you that no Mortal Man alive or dead is more receptive to your message or signs than I who stands before you here and now. Speak, if you will."

I look to the Heavens and see an eye open above me in the clouds, looking at me. It turns its focus just to the left of me where I notice, right away, a face built into the rocks, a craggy, all knowing face with the same eye I’d seen in the clouds. It speaks, I listen. I speak, it listens. I see another face and it too speaks. To it I listen and when in turn I speak, it too listens. Then I see thousands of faces in that rock, all of it speaking and listening even as I speak and listen. This, communion.

I’ll not tell everything that was said that day at the rock, for a Man’s destiny when revealed is best left to himself but I will tell you what you need know. All those faces were all the gods. They were Allah, they were Christ, they were. The message they give me on this day is that all those faces, those gods are One. As is the rock underneath me, the large white shape that had swum beneath me on my way, and as am I. I am Allah. I am God. I am the rock. And so are you.

The rock tells me all it has to say and all eyes in all faces turn, look down into the crevice that splits the rock right up the middle. I am to descend to the very heart of the rock. There is something more there for me, the magic is not quite finished.

The Hopis tell me that when the Spirit world and Man successfully commune, the gods often give that Mortal a gift of sorts. I require nothing more than the gift of this Higher Insight into that which is the Universal Oneness of all things, but I am not a fool and would not risk offense. I climb down to the heart of the rock, my sandals threatening mutiny at every turn. I slip at one point and nearly tumble to my death but I have no fear. What more suitable place for my bleached bones to decay and become a part of the larger One than in this place of great magic? Could I ask for a better place, if not time? Regardless, it is not to be on this particular day. All roads lead to Rome, all Rivers to the Sea, eventually. I reach the heart and there it is. My gift from the cosmos.

Rather than swim back I decide on the long walk around the shore. I’m not ready to speak with my friends, I have digesting to do, reflection. This reflection goes on to the moment I write of it, will go on until I’m silenced forever. If ever. Onness makes you think on these matters. How can One truly be gone if One yet remains?

I snap from my thoughts as darkness falls about me. How long have I been ruminating on this? Long enough for me friends to have built a fire and for me to be stumbling in the darkness, apparently. For the second time that day I feel a presence, behind me this time and undoubtable when I hear a low growl that turns into something of a roar. I turn and look and all I can detect in the darkness are blazing eyes. Big blazing eyes. I am unafraid.

The gift from the Gods was this tree-branch honed by the forces of Nature into a perfect spear, and though it be thick and rough it is every bit as beautiful a gift as one could expect from the Gods. Blunt on one end, sharp on the other. A walking tool if needs be, a weapon also. I'd hefted it in my hands and thanked the Powers that be for my gift, and made to them the following oath:

“I’ll not hurl unless I mean to strike. I’ll not strike unless I mean to kill.”

When I turn to face the beast in the night I am comforted by the weight of the thing in my hand. I slowly circle the beast, discerning in the darkness that I am face to face with a large bear, ravenous and crazed, species indeterminate. He saunters in the direction of my friends and I’ll not allow his passage on this day nor any other. I’ll stop him from reaching them or die trying. Maybe I’m the crazed and ravenous one. Regardless, he’ll not pass on my watch, one way or the other.

I hold my staff over my head and speak from the very pit of my stomach so this creature knows I’m not fucking around. And I’m not.

“I mean you no harm, creature. You and I are One and it serves my purposes just as well to let you live. Turn in your path or force my hand.”

It saunters forward, my hand forced. I strike him quickly right in the snout with the blunt end of my staff. These beasts have thick skulls and I know better than to think I’m gonna knock the sucker out butI might scare him off. Or piss him off worse. Fuck it. All roads to Rome, all rivers to the sea, eventually. I land a home-run swing to the temple that backs him up a few steps. He climbs to his feet and roars a blood-curdling battlecry. I do the same. Both beasts. One beast.

Mindful of my oath to the Cosmos I lift my staff to shoulder height in my right hand. I hurl, it strikes and it strikes to kill. I’ve struck the beast in the heart and its howl of pain brings me no pleasure nor sorrow. I slay him in the defence of those I love and in the ways of the Ancients I eat his heart, I drink his life-blood. We were and are one, and always will be. My spirit animal is attained.

The darkness lifts. Has a day passed or was it ever even night? I return to my friends, dizzy but so alive. Rachel greets me and tells me she believes we will always be friends. I’m filled with the love I always have for her and tell her it is my most fervent desire for it to be so. And it is.

The girls tell me of an expression in the yoga culture and it cannot be more perfect in the face of all I have learned and that has transpired on this day, blows me away again. “Namaste” they tell me is a means of greeting in which you are really saying

‘I am in that place within me that comes from truth, love and oneness and if you are also in that place within you then we are one.’

The vibe I’m tripping on these chicks are already totally hip to. All roads, I think for the billionth time that day, even as I meet one of my little yoga buddies for our clandestine kiss. It is sweet and rich and paves the way for the perfect ending for the perfect day, a mad, passionate, sweaty session on the rough floor of the cottage, trying not to make any noise but not caring in the end and when we come we cum as one. It is every bit as beautiful as anything else I saw that day. the next morning I was asked of it and I said only what I needed, that I admit and regret nothing. I was told I was a brat but it went no further.

I go back the next day to where I'd killed the beast and there was no trace. Had its carcas been claimed by the tide, taken to sea and joined the ocean or had it ever even happened? I'd never know. And I'm cool with that. It is to be that way.

Namaste. And thanks to my friends. I love you.

iSenseChange

RandomMP3age: “Say Hello to Heaven” by Temple of the Dog. Totally random, I swear it to the Cosmos to be True.

A Word With the Beasts

2007-02-16T17:34:00.000-08:00

I’d chat with a terrorist, if I could and I knew he wouldn’t eat me. Absolutely. Oh, I know. We must never speak with them. Heaven forbid. It’s a maxim carved in adamantium forged in the beginning of the universe. No deals with terrorists, no talking with terrorists. We may only crush them. And by Christ we have the means! Sort of...

(Well, I guess the UK worked out their shit with the IRA through dialogue and agreement but…those are all white people. Sensible, right? Sure.)

But are we not bloggers hard on the trail of Truth? Let’s get the words right from the bloodthirsty cannibal’s mouths, once and for all!

“Gimme a root cause, you stinking savage! I don’t care about your virgin orgy in space or whatever! Motivations for hatred separate from all the religious crap! C’mon, whattaya got?”

And you know what I’d do? I’d listen. And I’d question. And I’d make notes. And I’d research.

What would I do next? Then you go ahead and do the same thing for the other side, an Israeli soldier, perhaps. Maybe a history teacher called up from the reserves. And I’d listen. And I’d question. And I’d make notes. And I’d research.

Then you know what I’d do? I’d study and research both sides until I could argue both sides flawlessly. Then I’d come up with an independent, nonpartisan response to the whole situation. Only then could I begin to try to fix this hoary beast once and for all.

Suspicion – if Land and Resources is the Root cause (and I can assure you, it almost always is) then this is what’s gonna work for both sides: Israel returns to 1967 borders, established by the UN and holding true to Resolution this or that and all the American treaties it signed. If they are prepared to do this, all MidEast Nations sign on to both Palestine and Israel’s right to exist and all hostilities are stopped. Future problems between occupants of the region are to be settled in NonPartisan United Nations courts in which no one nation holds sway and the genuine will of the people of the world is reflected. Any involved nation or group that goes outside of the United Nations court system gets picked up, dealt with, smacked down and what-not.

Oh, but that’s impossible, Sense, you poor adle-brained child! The UN is a (insert here: joke, totally corrupt, toothless, meaningless, useless etc). Yes. I’m sure you’re right. Does that mean it must always be so? They are a bunch of politicians. Expect nothing better from them until you demand it to be so, Citizens. Period. If you live in a Democracy then you believe that your representative works for you. Will act in your name and is therefore answerable to you. I, for one, as a Citizen of the United Nations would like more say in the goings on, more accountability. You?

That’s if you want a lasting resolution as everybody so sensibly claims they do. I’m not certain this is the case. But there you have it, a solution to the MidEast or just another collection of meaningless ones and zeroes for the infinity of the Internet.

Whatever.

-iSenseChange, but not necessarily

RandomMP3age: "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" Harry Connick Jr.

Finally, A Sign of Hope From America

2007-02-16T17:32:00.000-08:00

That smarmy fink Leiberman or whatever his name is, beat out by an AntiWar fellow! Ho ho! Out on yer arse, you undercover Dick! The People have spoken! Tell it to your Fink NeoCon, NeoFascist masters that THE FIX IS IN, that these are the Last Days of Disco, that it’s now, officially, as good as it’s ever gonna get and it’s never gonna get this good again! We’ve seen the hideous nature of your Souls and want no truck with it! Stick to Big Business where being a psychopath actually works for you!

Now begone, before the righteous tar and featherings begin in earnest! You lousy RAT BASTARDS!

This, finally, a sign of Hope from America.

But hey, that fink Lieberman is just a start, friends and neighbors. Many Democrats supported this War and still support them. You gotta let 'em know, that doesn't stand. It doesn't represent YOU! And you don't have to choose the best of the bad apples anymore! Is not yours a Democracy OF and FOR THE PEOPLE?!? AND THE PEOPLE DON'T WANT WAR! THEY NEVER DO! IT HAS TO BE SOLD TO THEM! THEY ALWAYS HAVE TO BE MANIPULATED, TRICKED OR FEARED INTO IT! SAY TO THOSE WHO WOULD PUT YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY AND LOVED ONES ON THE FRONT LINES FOR THEIR OWN CORPORATE GREEDS, 'NO MORE'!!! SEND THE BASTARDS PACKING!

Lieberman is just a start. Let 'em all know.

That is all.

-iSenseChange...?

Fighting Terror: What Works, What Doesn't? JUST ASK ISRAEL

2007-02-16T17:29:00.000-08:00

Okay, there's some lessons out there to be learned. The eternal question: is anybody learning, anything, at all? The eternal answer: What's on t.v? Well, News for one thing, and for all my fellow MetaNews Analysts out there there's just all sorts of interesting things worth looking at, poking, prodding and finally coming up with some kind of answer.

How about the two different approaches to fighting terrorism that we all saw and are seeing right now? Those two approaches: Army and Military Might versus Intelligence and Good Police Work. Let's break it down, shall we?

ARMY AND MILITARY MIGHT: Battlegrounds: Iraq and Lebanon. Byproduct of Approach: Fostering of yet more hatred in the realm and the breeding of future generations of terrorists. This is beyond debate at this point, noone can credibly deny in any way that America and Israel's military 'responses' to 'Terrorism' has done anything but increase popularity of such movements and will inevitably sow more chaos and doom in the future. Hey folks, the proof is in the pudding: Hezbollah's still sticking around and will be more powerful than ever as a DIRECT RESULT of Israel's military gambit. They’ve hung in tight against a vastly stronger and multifaceted force and gained prestige in the Arab world and even the larger international arena. With Israel’s hideously monstrous actions against the entire nation of Lebanon comes the percieved legitimacy of Hezbollah in the eyes of people in the area and even many outside of it. If, as Dubya says, Lebanon is a front on the "War on Terror," I have to conclude that an important battle has been lost by US-ISRAEL. Tough noogies, all, War is for savages anyway.

INTELLIGENCE AND GOOD POLICEWORK: Battlegrounds: London and Canada. The bus bombings in London showed a textbook definition of how to treat a terrorist act. Forget whipping the populace up into a state of perpetual fear so you can remove all their rights and usher in eternal war, take a novel approach and actually pursue and catch the bad guys. Which they did. Within days. We have seen another example in the last few days where the UK has successfully intervened in thwarting another terrorist plot (though we'll see about the legitimacy of this in time) and Canada did the same a few months ago, again using good intelligence and strong policework.
Byproduct of Approach: criminals apprehended, world more safe, etc.

Seeing a pattern here? Your 'Global War on Terror' is a vast and undeniable failure, doomed from the start. Spend ALL THAT MONEY on prevention and intelligence and you'd be golden, instead of totally at risk as you still are to this very day.

CONCLUSION 1: Terrorism is best fought by good police work, great Intelligence and enhanced anti-terrorism detection techniques. This is an inescapable fact.

CONCLUSION 2: Israel-America’s greatest enemy in the Arab world? Israel-America.

MetaNews Analysis, another helpful service from the good folks at the SenseChange Center for Positive Change. Thanks, and have a GREAT day.

-iSC

RandomMP3age: "Burning Ring of Fire" Johnny Cash