oh, for christ's sweet sake

for the life of me, i can't remember the last time any elected official, agency or governing body at any level of our government did anything purely for the good of the governed--you know, without there being an ulterior motive in the form of wildly-inefficient wealth redistribution and/or--as is the case with this latest bullshit--a power grab.

consider for a moment:  you're an elected official faced with the fact that two-thirds of the citizens who entrusted you with some measure of their welfare are obese--a national phenomenon that wasn't even a blip on the public radar screen 40 years ago.

in order to "solve" the problem, do you look at what's changed since then, try and weigh the myriad factors which went into its creation--such as the fact that the rise of obesity in this country precisely coincides with the mass introduction by the food industry of (a) addictive, mind-altering excitotoxins in the guise of "flavor enhancers", and (b) a cheap, frankenstein's-monster corn-based sweetener which demonstrably and effectively turns off the "i've had enough" switch in the human body, may be two to three times as fattening as natural sugar, and has replaced said substance in virtually every product on american shelves?  or the fact that, between the two of 'em, the average american trying to maintain a healthy weight by eating in moderation what's offered up to him by the food industry in his country doesn't stand a goddam chance in hell?

or do you merely isolate the most obvious symptom of what is a far deeper problem--overindulgence--and pounce on it as a excuse to clamp your iron fist of benevolence around the throats of your subjects?

well, for the paternalistic billionaire asshole who runs new york and knows what's best for everybody, the choice was a no-brainer.  so from now on, new yorkers, you wanna buy a soda or any other sweetened beverage that's bigger than your mayor deems proper or necessary? well, you're shit outta luck--but all for your own good, of course.

it's not what this guy and all the others just like him across the country at every level of government are trying to do that bothers me so much--hell, power-junkies have existed as long as humans have walked on two legs.  it's the fact that we're collectively lying back, spreading our legs and letting 'em do it that makes me glad i lived the better part of my life back in an america in which individual freedom still sorta mattered, and any politician who even dreamed of such an overreach of power would've been tarred, feathered and run outta town on a rail.

welcome to the new nanny state, america--have a (small) coke and a smile.

what is the matter with people?

seems that whenever i think that nothing done in the name of artistic self-expression could surprise me anymore, along comes something new.

i have hinted (ok, more than hinted) at my contempt for much of what has been pawned off as "art" over the past hundred or so years, as its most celebrated practitioners discarded the age-old tenets of beauty, virtuosity and elevation of humanity through their collective vision, and embraced something quite different.

all of a sudden, "good" art was no longer beautiful and able to stand on its innate merits--the new art was crude and ugly, and thus had to be explained in order to be understood.  and anyone who saw through the scam promoted by these clever hucksters and their apologists, or merely didn't get the sales pitch--or, god forbid, said something as eminently sensible as "my two-year-old coulda done that"--was immediately dismissed and ridiculed by the intelligentsia as an unwashed philistine.

and thus the public were intimidated into buying the big lie--and, before they knew it, offering up their tax dollars to subsidize the artistic "creation" of such masterpieces as crucifixes in jars of urine.

corollary #1 to the mkf unified theory of the evolution of art:  beauty is hard, but ugly is easy.  so, ugly it is.

corollary #2 to the mkf unified theory of the evolution of art:  if it has to be explained in order to be appreciated, it's probably crap.

all of which is merely a prelude to the subject of today's post--if you think i have strong feelings about such static creations as paintings, sculpture and photographs of sacred objects in jars of artistic piss, you don't even wanna get me started on the subject of that bastard love-child spawned by the modern art movement known as "performance" art.

seriously, what does it say about a civilization when some guy calling himself an artist can chop off his dick and balls, braise 'em up in a pan along with some mushrooms, and serve his creation garnished with a sprig of parsley to a group of art lovers who ponied up $250 a plate

god, i at least hope he was hung

in order to partake of his genius--oh, and have a waitlist of disappointed patrons lined up with checkbooks in hand on the off chance he can manage to grow, chop off and cook another set?

i guess the better question would be, why did this giant of the art world sell himself so short?  because god knows the right gallery coulda gotten him so much more.

i guess it's "race week" here in guttermoralityland

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remember the other night when in passing i mentioned marion barry amongst a whole slew of others who were deserving of their own posts?  well, tonight's his night.


it was, what, maybe two months ago when a couple white sports-types at ESPN worked "chink in the armor" references into stories about some taiwanese basketball player and you'da thought they'd harelipped the pope from the hysterical reaction that ensued?  the story was instantly everywhere, the response of the asian-american community was loud, swift and merciless, and the network wasted no time in firing and suspending the offending writer and sportscaster, respectively, despite their fevered apologies.

flash-forward to today.  marion barry, that bastion of probity and restraint, the oracle of washington DC, issues an urgent warning about the greatest threat facing his community:

We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops. They ought to go. I’m going to say that right now. But we need African-American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too.

and then, immediately after basically announcing the formation of the DC Kristallnacht Committee for the Removal of Those Damn Dirty Asians, this dumb, loutish pig has the breathtaking, bald-faced audacity to follow it up with

I'm not ever going to condemn a group of people. My history is complete. It's an excellent history with the Asian community.

marion barry, you may ask? this former mayor of DC whose administrations were marked by increasing incompetence and corruption was caught on camera by the feds during his third term smoking crack, charged with perjury and drug possession, and, after his conviction and incarceration (during which he was allegedly caught being blown by a woman other than his wife in a prison waiting room), went on to run for city council, a race he won in a landslide.  this, followed by a triumphant return two years later to the mayor's office, and then ultimately back to his former city council seat upon which lofty perch he rests today--and from where, when he's not saying things like "If you take out the killings, Washington actually has a very, very low crime rate", he issues such proclamations as the above.

the secret to his success?  like all the race-baiters, he gives his people what they want:  ready-made scapegoats upon which to pin the blame for their collective failure, thus providing steady fuel for their rage--asians (along with the jews, of course) being perennial favorite targets for nothing more than committing the unpardonable sin of succeeding in white racist america, and thus putting the lie to their assertion that such a thing is impossible.

anyway, back to our story:  the reaction of the asian-american community to this latest chink in its armor was, predictably, loud, swift and merciless as follows:

it’s regrettably inappropriate. I’m hoping he misspoke. 

Susan Au Allen

president, U.S. Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce

misspoke? misspoke?! bitch, motherfucker didn't misspeak--he said exactly what he meant, knowing full well that in so doing he painted big red targets on the backs of every asian merchant doing business in the powder keg that is the city over which he presides.

and you damn well know it, susan, but you can't say so, because--well, because you can't.

*     *     *     *     *

i know a few white racists, but very few; the majority of whites i know who resent blacks do so not because they think they're inferior and/or should be segregated, but because african-americans reside in a bulletproof bubble of political correctness which excuses their every excess and allows them to say and do with impunity things that wouldn't be tolerated for an instant if said whites said or did anything even remotely similar.

and while i'm on the subject, the majority of whites i know who profile blacks do so not because of racism, but for very sane, rational reasons--reasons i'll maybe get into the next time some african-american race-baiting asshole jerks my chain.

oh, wait--it's already happened.  stay tuned.

yeah, but tell us how you really feel, mkf

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there was a time in america when, if a public figure fucked up badly or showed his true ugly face, the public outcry would be such that his disgraced ass would have little choice but to leave public life and retreat into ignominious retirement, rarely to be seen or heard from again (see joe mccarthy, richard nixon, et al.).

that time, sadly, has long since passed.  today, such people use the sudden media prominence that said fuck-up affords them to elevate themselves into even higher positions of authority and influence.  barney frank, david vitter, alan greenspan, ben bernanke, larry summers, george w. bush and condoleezza rice are but a few examples that come most easily to mind.

the reason for this is no great mystery--standards of behavior and performance in america have declined so radically in the last 40 or so years that incompetence, corruption and sociopathy in our celebrities, athletes and chosen leaders are not only forgiven, they're rewarded with even greater power and influence.

but as bad it's become in mainstream america, in order to experience the ultimate expression of this phenomenon at work, you have to look to the folks that the african-american community choose to elevate as their leaders. and while i could devote entire blogposts to such luminaries as marion barry, alcee hastings, charlie rangel, jesse jackson, bobby seale, louis farrakhan, william jefferson, maxine waters, jeremiah wright and sheila jackson lee, tonight's post is devoted to the man who currently occupies the throne in this pantheon of said knaves and malefactors:  the loathsome, despicable al sharpton.

for those of you too young to have experienced the real al before he reinvented himself as the genial, folksy, besuited pundit you see on TV today, i have but two words for you:  the first is "tawana", and the second is "brawley" (google her if you don't know).

while the fallout and scandal which ensued from the above-referenced fiasco should have discredited this charlatan forever, he went on to even greater glory when, not satisfied with the mayhem he had wrought in the above instance, he seized upon the opportunity to fan the flames of unrest following racially-charged incidents in the crown heights and bensonhurst neighborhoods of new york.  in so doing, this megalomaniacal, malevolent fuck discovered, probably as much to his own surprise as everybody else's, that by threatening an escalation of tensions via the rabble-rousing at which he so excelled, he could pretty much bring the powers that be to their knees.

well, you can call ol' al any number of things, but one of 'em ain't 'dumb'.  thrilled and emboldened by his newfound power, he cleaned up his image and took his show on the road, becoming a media darling and joining jesse jackson in threatening large corporations with all sorts of demonstrations and boycotts for their perceived discrimination against minorities unless they ponied up huge chunks of cash to his "national action network".  and, one after another, they caved--companies like Pepsico, Chrysler, GM and Colgate-Palmolive fell like dominoes before mighty al, filling his coffers to overflowing (so much so that you'd think he'd easily be able to cover his IRS tab--but no, in addition to his other sterling qualities, al's a tax cheat, too).

and now, he's attempting to pull off his biggest coup yet:  whereas in the past, the damage of which al was capable of inflicting was generally limited to local or regional fallout, he has assumed a starring role in the trayvon martin story, vowing an "escalation" (his favorite word) of demonstrations and civil disobedience in sanford, florida, unless the police force there immediately hop to his tune and arrest young mr. martin's killer.

and this time, the simmering resentment and rage that al and his fellow race-baiting grifters have so adroitly tapped into--and that they are in no small part responsible for creating--threatens to boil over and spread far beyond the small town where this tragedy took place.

and if it does, you can bet ol' al will be safely removed from it all, publicly disavowing any responsibility while privately grinning like nero as he stroked himself while rome burned.

god, i hate this motherfucker.

a rare populist rant

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if, like most americans overwhelmed by the complexity of our current financial crisis, you know the banks pulled some really shady shit but can't quite put your finger on what exactly it was they did, allow me to present for your delectation a little bank fraud to which everybody can relate.

consider the situation of one veronica gutierrez:

veronica, like many americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, was watching every penny.  yet, as careful as (i'm sure) she was, it was inevitable that one day she'd fuck up.

hey, we've all been there, right?  i can easily imagine veronica kicking herself when that check came back, knowing it was gonna cost her $22 she didn't have to spare.

what i can't so easily imagine is how veronica must've felt when she got her statement at the end of that month:

confused?  lemme help you out:  apparently, the good folks who ran one of the richest, most powerful banks in the country were so desperate for every last penny that they developed an algorithm which re-ordered the transactions of their poorest [and, presumably, dumbest] customers in such a way as to maximize the overdraft fees they could extort from them.

was veronica amused? not in the least; nor were the attorneys who made her the lead plaintiff in their class action.

everything i've ever said on this blog about frivolous lawsuits and/or outsized jury awards aside, screw the $66 wells fargo thought they owed veronica--i hope the bitch got $66 fucking million outta the $203 million the jury awarded in the case.  and then punitive damages on top of that.

*     *     *     *     *

of course, we all know that's not the way it played out; veronica and her co-plaintiffs probably each got next to nothing, while their attorneys all became multi-millionaires, if they weren't already.


bankers, lawyers--whatever, they're all motherfuckers.

a rant in three parts (part 2)

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this one may not be ready for prime time, but if it'll push the last one below the fold, it's good enough.

and for the lost, it's part 2 of this one.

the myth:  the only reason america is still in this recession is because our leaders don't have the balls to crank up the presses and spend our way out of it.

the basis for the myth:  world war II ended the great depression, thus proving forevermore that massive spending solves massive economic crises; ergo, nothing short of another world war II-level stimulus will solve our current economic crisis.

yeah.

ever heard of the broken-window fallacy?  it's a staple of austrian economics, and hazlitt's version goes something like this: 

A kid throws a rock at a window and breaks it, and everyone standing around regrets the unfortunate state of affairs. But then up walks a man who points out that this is not a bad thing after all. The man fixing the window will get money for doing so. This will then be spent on a new suit, and the tailor too will get money. The tailor will spend money on other items, and the circle of rising prosperity will expand without end.

you can see the problem with this scenario immediately, right?  this "circle of rising prosperity" occurs at the expense of the poor guy whose window was broken--the money he might himself have spent on a new suit or other items went instead to something he wouldn't have needed had the window not been broken in the first place.

easy to see the truth when it's just one little window, but apparently not so easy when you scale it up a few orders of magnitude.

consider:  between 1940 and 1945,  the united states of america spent billions of dollars and employed millions of people to essentially do nothing but build lots and lots of really expensive rocks, and throw 'em through the windows of the world.

did all this destruction solve the depression?  not by a long shot--it enriched a handful of bankers and industrialists to be sure, but by the end of world war II, there was nothing left but a world full of broken windows, a huge american workforce and military suddenly left with nothing to do, and an america that was monstrously in debt.

which brings me to my point:  it wasn't world war II that ended the depression, people--it was its aftermath.

in august 1945, we were the last man standing, an untouched-by-war industrial powerhouse to which the destroyed countries of the world, allies and former enemies alike, were forced to turn in order to repair their broken windows.  and we were all geared up for production, had an enormous skilled workforce and a captive market--how the hell could we lose?

now, compare and contrast the america of 1945 to the america of today.

back then:

• america was brimming with wartime factories that could easily be converted to make things the world needed and wanted--and we had virtually no competition.

• government was still small, and had infinite room to expand.

• the bankers and the corporations hadn't yet leveraged the financial and commodities markets into the bloated, voracious monsters they are today.

• there was no medicare, medicaid, welfare or food stamps to drain the national treasury, and social security payouts were barely a blip in the budget.

• personal debt among the citizenry was almost non-existent.

• almost half of americans lived on farms, and produced their own food.

• our underclass was far smaller, far less entitled, and far better behaved.

• the veneer of civilization was far thicker.

i could go on, but you get the point, right?

in other words, back in 1945 we were a lean, mean america whose bubble was just beginning to expand; today, we're a fat, soft, bloated america whose bubble has burst, all the stimulus in the world won't reflate us, and the new lean, mean, more productive economies of the world are circling our cooling carcass and licking their chops.

and you think larry summers and his "spend our way to prosperity" cronies don't understand this?  of course they do.

so if they already know massive spending isn't gonna work, why is it that they're preaching this fallacious gospel, you ask?

well, if i told you now, there'd be no need for a part 3, would there?

a rant in three parts (part 1)

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The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending, it can only be resolved with more confidence, more borrowing and lending, and more spending.

larry summers, director,

white house economic council

and there you have it, folks--laid out in a reuters opinion piece this week for all the world to see by the economist and former treasury secretary whose opinions have held more sway over two of the last three administrations than any other single individual--the neo-keynesian strategy reduced to its essence.

i want you to go back and re-read the above quote--maybe a couple times--and sit with it a minute, see how it plays in your mind.  and then i want you to indulge in a little wordplay with me--imagine just for shits and giggles we take that quote and strip it of its specificity, like this:

The central irony of [a] is that while it is caused by too much [b], it can only be resolved with more [b].

and then substitute for the phrases "financial crisis" "and "too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending" the cause-and-effect pairing of your choice.  i'll give you a couple to get you started:

the central irony of lung cancer is that while it is caused by too much smoking, it can only be resolved with more smoking.

or how about

the central irony of flash-flooding is that while it is caused by heavy rains, it can only be resolved with more heavy rains.

see where i'm going with this?  with the possible exception of a hangover, i defy you to come with any [a] caused by [b] which can be resolved by shoving more [b] at it.

yet these-these economists would have you believe that their dismal science is the exception to the rule, and that fixing the mess for which they themselves are in no small part responsible requires that humanity suspend its critical faculties and blindly believe the above bullshit.

and as much i'd love to deride and dismiss larry summers as nothing more than a common dumbass for not only the above statement but many others as well, i'm afraid i can't--because, far from being stupid, this guy has long enjoyed the well-earned distinction of being the smartest guy in most any room he chooses to enter.  in fact, all these guys who espouse this bullshit are smart--krugman, rubin, bernanke, all of 'em.

so how could this legion of geniuses possibly justify something so counter-intuitive as the above, you ask?  simple:  they learned it in the best schools in the country at the knees of the generation of economists that preceded them.  and where did those guys get it?  that's simple, too--all this "spend our way to prosperity" nonsense derives from one great, shining, deliberate lie.

[next:  debunking the "world war II as the ultimate stimulus" myth]

day 12: why are we over there, again?

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so after ranting on the subject just last night, i wake up to the following headlines:

a decade ago, we committed our military might, the lives of thousands of our soldiers, our treasure and our national prestige to the dubious tasks of waging war and nation-building in afghanistan and iraq.

and for what--so that these countries can descend into chaos as soon as we withdraw, leaving their region far less stable than had we done nothing?

if there's a god up there, may he damn to hell the foolish, arrogant men who foisted these follies upon us.

____________
update:  i can be a little cranky when i first get up.

day 2: my last-ever global warming post (unless, of course, it's not)

believe it or not, i'm not a global-warming denier; rather, i'd call myself a healthy skeptic.

not just because of the recent exposures of shoddy science, cover-ups, conflicts of interest and outright fraud within the movement.

and not just because the movement's disciples keep moving the goalposts as the planet stubbornly refuses to warm on schedule per their vaunted computer models (thus requiring the awkward branding shift from global "warming" to global "climate change").

and not even because of all the high-living fat cats at the top of the movement preaching austerity to the rest of us as they position themselves to reap huge fortunes from the carbon-offset schemes they've devised to save us from ourselves.

no, my skepticism goes beyond all that--in fact, a wall street journal article from back in february summed up my feelings on the subject in a couple well-written paragraphs:

We do know that carbon dioxide and other gases trap and re-radiate heat. We also know that humans have emitted ever-more of these gases since the Industrial Revolution. What we don't know is exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in these gases versus other possible factors—solar variability, oceanic currents, Pacific heating and cooling cycles, planets' gravitational and magnetic oscillations, and so on.

Given the unknowns, it's possible that even if we spend trillions of dollars, and forgo trillions more in future economic growth, to cut carbon emissions to pre-industrial levels, the climate will continue to change--as it always has.

as it always has.

oh, and speaking of "solar variability",  get this:  scientists who had up until very recently been convinced we were heading into a period of intense solar activity have--as scientists frequently do-- suddenly changed their tune.

According to three studies released in the United States on Tuesday, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.  

and how did the sun's "inactivity" affect us here on earth back in the 17th century?  glad you asked, because i was curious about that too.

Experts are now probing whether this period of inactivity could be a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period when hardly any sunspots were observed between 1645-1715, a period known as...

wait for it--here it comes...

the "Little Ice Age."

got that, folks?  according to the scientists over here, the planet's warming--unless, of course, the scientists over there are right, in which case we're about to get our collective asses frozen off.

see where i'm going with this?

*     *     *     *     *

whenever i'm drawn into a discussion with a global-warming fanatic, i always end it with some variation of the following:

"ok, hotshot, i've just appointed you king of the world, given you carte blanche.  solve global warming--you've got 5...4...3...2..."

and, of course, they can't.

because what it comes down to is this:  the world is not gonna give up its cars, its chemicals and its concrete.  no civilization in the history of humanity has ever voluntarily regressed, and we're not going to, either.

and despite all the pie-in-the-sky bullshit to the contrary, there isn't a green option on the horizon with even a snowball's chance in hell of supplanting oil and/or coal in our lifetime.

is mankind a cancer on the planet?  are we fouling our own nest to the point of engineering our own extinction?  yeah, and yeah.

so let's expend our energies on mitigating our impact where it's practical--like accelerating the development of green technologies, curbing the birth rates of the third-worlders and maybe cleaning up the oceans, for instance--and leave the weather to the gods where it belongs, ok?

different dance, same ol' song

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one of the pleasures of writing guttermorality is the opportunity it affords me to indulge in the occasional random, drunken rant.

unless you've experienced it yourself, you'll just have to trust me--there's little in life more satisfying than getting a hair up your ass about some dumbass thing or other, letting loose in a satisfying blast, hitting "publish" and stumbling all self-satisfied off to bed.

and such was (almost) the case with this post written back in early may.  problem was, by the time i was done venting my spleen i was too, let's say, exhausted to perform the elementary photoshoppery necessary to create the below composite image--so i hit "save as draft" instead, stumbled my not-quite self-satisfied ass off to bed and promptly forgot all about it.

until tonight, that is.  better late than never, right?

*     *     *     *     *

michelle obama is, i'm sure, a very nice lady, and she's handled her duties as first lady--a job that would have to bore the living shit outta someone with her background--with commendable grace.

but one thing michelle obama is not, is stupid--which makes what she's doing right now not only egregiously dishonest, but laughable.

what am i talking about?  her dancing around the country telling poor and middle-class people to eat healthy when she knows damn well that one of the main reasons poor people eat unhealthy is because a jumbo jack with cheese can be had for less than a third of what a comparably-filling chinese chicken salad would cost 'em, that's what.

and not for any good reason, either.  the cost of producing a bowlful of healthy greens is infinitely less than that of a quarter-pound of hamburger and a slice of cheese (and i'm not just talking dollars and cents--the environmental costs associated with raising, feeding, waste disposal and slaughter of industrially-grown cattle are astronomical).

but you'd never know it when you go to the supermarket, would you?  a pound of hamburger and a pound of arugula will cost you about the same.  it's madness, and all thanks to the way the people over at michelle's husband's department of agriculture--in fact, every department of agriculture since nixon--dole out the goddam subsidies.

basically what it comes down to is, the corn, beef and dairy lobbies throw a lot of campaign money at politicians in washington in order to ensure that shitloads of your tax dollars will be used to keep their respective industries' genetically-modified, excitotoxin-laced, hormone-adulterated products artificially cheap so that you will eat and drink them in abundance and consequently fatten and develop all kinds of mental and physical diseases, at which point the food industry will happily hand you off to the medical and pharmaceutical industries so that they can drain you of whatever dollars you have left before you die.

think i'm being a little harsh, do you? then consider this:  about the same time michelle was kicking off her "let's move" campaign, a division of her husband's department of agriculture euphemistically (and misleadingly) called dairy management, inc. was working with the fast-food industry in an ambitious multi-million-dollar campaign to boost lagging sales by increasing the use of cheap, fat-laden, taxpayer-subsidized cheese in their products by up to 40%.

how did it (and other similar past campaigns) work?  admirably, i'd say--according to the above-linked article,

Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese a year, nearly triple the 1970 rate.

you really want us to eat healthy, michelle?  then next time you're in bed with your husband, snuggle up to him real close, nibble his ear a little and, in your sweetest, most seductive voice, whisper to him to quit subsidizing fattening, unhealthy foods with our tax dollars, and throw a little of that money to--

oh wait--there's no arugula lobby, you say?  never mind.

f is the new n

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so some cretinous, overpaid athlete offhandedly and in the heat of competition calls a referee a fucking fag, at which point america immediately screeches to a halt and said athlete is not only forced to grovel and explain himself and kiss GLAAD's ass for merely screaming what angry males have screamed at each other since time immemorial, but further, is told  he'll have to cough up a hundred grand in order to make it right--and even that won't really be enough for his sudden and egregious new sin against humanity.

[a little context:  this is the same athlete who was basically given a "so what?" pass by america over allegations of rape in a colorado hotel, and then again later when it was revealed that he and his wife had systematically and over a period of years exploited and abused their maid--but of course in the PC america of today shit like that's small potatoes in comparison to the use of the "f" word, right?]

my first reaction when i heard this story (once i retrieved my jaw from the floor) was, "give it up, niggers, because it's now official:  the faggots done stole your victim crown."

my second reaction was wondering what most of the rest of the world--you know, the people who spend their lives routinely dodging machetes and bullets and bombs [i.e., folks who understand the true meaning of the words "injury" and "victim"] would think if they knew that some rich american asshole was forced to fork over enough money to feed their entire village for ten years merely because he called some other american asshole a name.

i remember back when the gays co-opted the derogatory slur "queer" and effectively neutralized its power by making it their own, and how smart i thought it was that my own particular oppressed minority had decided not to paint itself into the same semantic victim corner in which african-americans have languished for as long as i've been alive.

i guess somewhere between "queer" and "faggot",  the sweet lure of victimhood became too great.

arrested development

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the other day i'm talking to an old friend, for some reason the subject of my brother comes up and he asks, "so do his kids hate him yet?"

based on the stories i've told him, it's a fair question, but my answer surprises him. truth is, while my brother holds little but contempt for the family he came from, he's done pretty well by the one he created:  a solid 27-year marriage, and two great kids who adore him.

"holy shit," i realize after hanging up the phone, "my little brother'll probably be a grandfather before long."

and then i thought about my own grandfathers, both of whom died, worn and weary in their mid-fifties, before i was born.  i thought about how old and grandfatherly they had always looked to me in the faded snapshots, and that's when it hit me that these stolid, churchgoing men were the same age in those pictures as my drunken irresponsible boy-chasing ass is now.

and then i thought, and not for the first time, about all that these men--my brother, my grandfathers and countless others before and after--had given up in order to create stable homes and provide not only for their families, but for the generations to come.  i thought about the commitment, the monogamy, the expense, the diapers, the drudgery, the school plays, the loans for college--you know, all that shit that, in small, sacrificial increments, weaves the fabric of society that the rest of us pretty much take for granted.

and then i asked myself, and not for the first time, if there was ever a point at which the fabulous mkf woulda been capable of such sacrifice--i.e., of living for a sustained period of time for anyone or anything other than himself.

[since the answer to that question is so obviously "no", i won't bother tryin to keep you in suspense.]

*     *     *     *     *

i watch the christians as they rage against gay marriage, and i totally feel their pain.

joe and ethel in toledo have trod the straight-and-narrow their entire lives, and now are forced to watch in horror as these promiscuous, hedonistic homosexuals co-opt and crap on their sacred traditions with their folsom street fairs and open relationships and god only knows what else.

homosexuality is an abomination! they cry, as they settle their fat asses onto their designer sofas in their calvin klein outfits to watch desperate housewives.

*     *     *     *     *

i watch my fellow gays as they rage against the evil, intolerant christians, and i feel their pain, too.

fuck the breeders! they cry, as they eagerly await the next generation of their offspring.

*     *     *     *     *

here's the truth, bitches:  gays and straights of civilized societies from time immemorial have always existed in uneasy symbiosis--neither can truly flourish without the other.

i live for the day when joe and ethel wake up and understand how truly gray their world would be without the evil homosexuals.

but far more importantly, i live for the day when my fellow faggots wake up and respect the fact that, without the sacrifices of the joe-and-ethels who comprise the backbone of this country, our collective self-indulgent fabulousness would be impossible.

am i the only one who gets this?

a walk down memory lane

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boy, this shot takes you back, doesn't it?  eight years of  "murderer!" and "nazi!" directed at the previous president, and nary a peep from the media or the leadership of the opposition as to how this sorta inflammatory, vitriolic hate-speech might, god forbid, incite violence against him.  guess since he was a nazi murderer and all, it was justified, right?

[for a truly breathtaking display of the whole panoply of non-inflammatory, non-vitriolic and totally civil "kill bush" images and words, click here--i promise it'll be as eye-opening for you as it was for me, because the media and lefty blogs sure as hell didn't evince any alarm or outrage over this shit (much less give it any coverage) when it was happening]

more recently, there was the way the media covered the discovery channel guy

y'know, the guy who strapped bombs around his body and took hostages.  an act of domestic terrorism?  nah--inconveniently, the guy was a non-white tree-hugger, and god knows the media won't tar any minority or any movement even remotely associated with the left with the "t" word.  were his wacko fantasies inflamed by all the hysterical "climate change" rhetoric we've all been marinating in for the last ten years?  never even brought up--crazed gunman, isolated incident.  case closed.

and before him, there was the inconveniently-muslim US army major nidal hasan

you remember him--mowed down 13 people at fort hood whilst screaming allahu akbar!,  but we were hastily assured by the media and the obama justice department that, rather than an act of domestic terrorism, this was merely an isolated incident involving a disturbed individual who couldn't possibly have been moved to violence by the inflammatory, vitriolic, jihadist hate-speech spouted by the extremist factions of his religion.  case closed.

so, knowing all this, anybody wanna hazard a guess as to why--within 30 minutes of determining nothing more than that the tucson shooter was a young, white male--the democrats, the mainstream media and every idiot liberal blogger on the interwebs were shrieking to the world that this was clearly an act of domestic terrorism inspired by the inflammatory, vitriolic hate-speech spewed by the tea party and the anti-illegal immigrationistas?

actually, never mind--i'll tell you why:  they desperately need a new timothy mcveigh to kill the fledgling grassroots limited-government movement with guilt by association, and they won't rest until they have a square peg they can jam into their round hole.

thing that kills me is, even as the truth has emerged about jared lee loughner--that, like so many assassins, he was a twisted loner whose politics, if any, had little to do with his murderous fixation on a public figure--far as the media and the left are concerned, it's still all dumbass sarah palin's fault for putting crosshairs on a goddam map.

*     *     *     *     *

it wasn't 9/11 that hurt us as a nation [yeah, it was bad, but in the overall scheme of horrific things that happen to nations, it wasn't that bad].  no, it was our hysterical over-reaction to 9/11 that truly hurt us--cursed us with the PATRIOT act, homeland security,  the ruinous wars in iraq and afghanistan. 

i.e., because the right effectively exploited our fear, we willingly traded our freedoms and our treasure for the illusion of safety.

today? an isolated shooting in arizona is being exploited by the left in order to serve the same ends.  at issue: the ability to regulate what you can see, say and hear, and whether or not you can own a gun--all, of course, in order to keep you "safe".

me?  i'll keep what's left of my freedoms and take my chances with the jared lee loughners of the world--i can only hope the majority of americans still feel the same.

mkf weighs in on the israeli/palestinian situation

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so tonight i came across an anti-israel rant on a blog i follow to which i took exception, and since (a) posting around here has been light lately, and (b) my response to same was my first decent drunken comment in months, i'm re-posting it here before i stagger off to bed:

it always amazes me when, given the choice between supporting the israelis or the palestinians, the faggots almost always go with the side that would superglue their assholes shut right before beheading 'em.

me? i go with the side that doesn't inculcate its children from birth with the belief that the other side are subhuman pigs who deserve to be slaughtered in the streets, and that sacrificing themselves in the accomplishment of this goal is their god-given mission in life.

these people coulda had their own state 10 years ago--the israelis bent over backwards agreeing to every concession arafat asked for while clinton and madeline albright simultaneously kissed his ass, and it still wasn't enough. why? because that might've brought peace, and that's the last thing the palestinians really want--whiny, bomb-lobbing victimhood's much more fun.

don't worry, tho--the palestinians have demographics on their side, and through sheer numbers they'll overrun the israelis soon enough--i give it 20-30 years. and then the one oasis of stable, western-friendly civilization in the middle east will descend into the chaos characteristic of the rest of the region, and every faggot in america but me will raise a glass in celebration.

[and if none of the above moves you even a little, i recommend you get naked with at least one israeli soldier before you condemn the whole country to hell--trust me, it'll change even your brother's mind.]

and in case you're wondering, his name was shaly, it happened about 10 years ago over the course of a weekend at the century plaza hotel, and its effect on israeli/mkf relations was incalculable.

how it shoulda been done

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so last night mitt romney's on larry king talking about obamacare, and i watch [not only because romney's been there/done that, but as governor of massachusetts he actually managed to package and deliver universal healthcare for his state (a) cleanly; (b) in an open, carefully deliberative and above-board manner, with a minimum of arm-twisting and/or shady backroom deals; and (3) with full bipartisan support--imagine that, bitches].

despite larry's best efforts to thwart him, he managed to say two very interesting things.

the first was [and yeah, i'm paraphrasing a little--but not much]:

"the healthcare bill that obama just signed is upwards of 2,500 pages, while our massachusetts bill was just 70 pages."

how could that be, you ask?  how could romney condense something so complex into so small a package?

he elaborates:

"we looked at the people who didn't have insurance, looked at all the money the state spent every year treating said people in emergency rooms and free clinics, took that money and used it to help those people buy private insurance."

get that, people?  10% of the citizens of his state didn't have healthcare, so romney's plan attempted to deal simply and directly with that 10%.

contrast that with obamacare:  10% of americans don't have healthcare, so he's gonna fix it by massively fucking with the 90% who do.

for those of you naive, sloppy, sentimental, uncritical thinkers who still believe that obamacare is anything but the pure, naked, socialistic power-grab it actually is, stay tuned--i've got a few more things to say on the subject.

should i or shouldn't i?

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consider, if you will, the following draft memorandum:

To:  [insert name of office manager here]

cc:  [insert name of human resources manager here]; [insert name of facilities manager here]

Subject:  Was This Really Necessary?

So Friday night at dinnertime i walk into the kitchen, open the refrigerator and reach for my salad, only to find it's no longer there.

I frantically search high and low--and ultimately find it.

In the trash.

And yeah yeah, I know:  Friday's refrigerator-cleaning day.  And yeah, I also know:  bad me, i failed to label and date my salad before i put it in the fridge.

But, seriously, I ask you--even considering the trashy surroundings, does this look like a salad that shoulda been thrown out to you?

I could kinda understand my salad being tossed had it been in an unlabeled, anonymous bag, but it wasn't--it was in a sparkling-clean, crystal-clear Pyrex bowl very much [i.e., exactly] like this one:

Fresh cabbage, cucumber, celery, radishes, tomatoes, red onion, avocado--a gorgeous, five-hour-old salad, its pristine freshness clearly visible through the glass--cavalierly thrown in the trash for no good reason I can see.

Back when we had three floors and twice the personnel i could sorta understand the rigid, unthinking inflexibility that resulted in innocent folks' food getting thrown out, but that is no longer the case--today, i see this kinda crap as nothing more than gratuitously punitive.

I spent half an hour and god only knows how many dollars' worth of organic produce lovingly assembling that salad before I came to work--only to end up being forced to spend an additional $7 for a crappy sandwich and chips at goddam Famima just so i could have something to eat that night.

And yeah, i'm pissed--somebody splain me, why did this happen?

I'm an easygoing guy and don't bitch often--in fact, in all my years of employment at _____________ I don't recall having ever bitched about anything before.  But i'm bitching now.

Seriously--if we must forsake common sense and judgment for this zero-tolerance, Nazi rigidity for no good goddam reason other than "it's just our policy," then could you at least leave our food out on the counter for us to try to save before you mercilessly throw it in the trash at the end of the day--is that too much to ask?

___________________________________

the stakes:  sending the above email would (a) scratch a serious itch i've had for a long time; (b) instantly elevate me to hero status among the rank and file; and (c) seriously embarrass, and thus earn me the undying enmity of, the anal-retentive nazi asshole [insert name of facilities manager here] whom i damn well know was the one who threw out my goddam salad--which could, and probably would, come back to bite me in the ass in any number of ways in the future.

is it worth it?  i almost think so, but then i'm drunk and thus possessed of questionable judgment--what do you think?

if this headline doesn't say it all, then i don't know what ever will

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do you get it yet, people?

when the overlords piously bloviate about how all the developed countries of the world must come together, surrender their autonomy to the united nations climate police and destroy what shreds of their economies and standards of living still remain for the sake of some half-assed, bogus science experiment gone wrong, they're only talking about you, the little people.

the architects of this massive fraud will, of course, be exempt from such strictures and be free to continue to rake in millions on their carbon-offset scams and public-speaking engagements, collect their awards and trot the globe in their gulfstreams preaching the virtue of sacrifice.

and yeah, i'm talkin about you, you fat fuck.

the whole hate crimes thing

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[in the comments section of my previous post, reader judi asked me for an explanation of the hate crimes legislation which, having slam-dunked its way through our house of representatives, is currently in the process of being rubber-stamped through the senate towards its inevitable obama signage-into-law.

the following is my answer to her question.]


basically, judi, it goes like this: for the past 233 years in america, you fucked somebody up, you did time.

under this bill? let's say you fuck somebody up because they're gay (or a member of any number of other protected minorities covered by said bill), you're gonna do time plus several extra years because, since your crime was motivated by hate, you're obviously an extra-bad person and therefore deserving of far more punishment than had you beat the guy up merely because he dissed your girlfriend or spilled a drink on you or something else perfectly reasonable like that.

but what if it's not so clear-cut? what if you maintain you fucked him up for reasons totally unrelated to his being gay? well, in the good old days, it wouldn't matter why you did it; all the court would care about is if you did it or not.

but not anymore, judi. in this brave new post-"hate crimes" world, the mere fact of your crime won't matter nearly so much as WHY you did the crime--never mind that the object of your rage would still be a puddle of bloody goo on the sidewalk either way, the law will now tell us that, if the victim happens to find himself in a class of citizen protected by this new hate-crimes statute, then he's far more injured--and thus, you're far more guilty--than had he not been so protected.

but that's ok, because homophobes are worse than bad, and they need an extra-special incentive like a "hate crimes" law to keep them from beating up on poor, hapless faggots, right?

thing that kills me is, the folks arguing this position are usually the same ones who can reliably be counted upon to scornfully laugh at the "death penalty as deterrent" folks.

[imagine the following scenario:

billy bob: "hey bobby joe, let's grab our baseball bats and go out and fuck us up some faggots, ok?"

bobby joe: "well, billy bob, as much as i love to fuck me up some faggots, that new extra-added "hate crimes" enhancement on top of the ordinary ol' assault-and-battery makes me think twice, so maybe we better not."

because that's the way it'll work, right?

yeah, right.]

of course, being as smart as i know you are, judi, i'm sure you will immediately see the other problem with this new order of things.

because if you're anything like me, you might believe that the objective, material and provable evidence of what you actually DID should be what matters in a court of law, rather than the subjective supposition of the thoughts which were presumably in your head AS you did what you did.

but in the end, no worries--the thought police will sort it all out for us and all will be well, right?

yeah, right.

* * * * *

had you asked almost any fag in america, judi, they'd have told you this "hate crimes" law is basically the greatest thing since sliced bread, since it's gonna save us all from homophobic hate and all.

but you? you had to ask me.

[next: the problem with creating protected classes in america--and boy, do i have a few things to say about that]

a word about my (and, for that matter, your) musical tastes

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it happened again today, only this time at work--guy grabs my ipod off my desk (because i'd forgotten to hide it), scrolls through my songs as i inwardly cringe, awaiting the inevitable; finally looks up at me incredulously and says, "where the hell do you even find this shit?"

this would be the point at which i'd usually make some lame apologetic excuse for my idiosyncratic tastes like i've been doing all my life.

but not today.

today, hungover and ornery, i snatch the ipod outta his hand and snarl, "each and every one of those songs is there for a reason, and they're reasons you wouldn't understand if you lived a thousand goddam years. now get outta here and let me get some work done."

surprised, he retreats--and i have my next blogpost.

because you know what? i've pretty much had it with people who mindlessly slam the musical tastes of other people without having the slightest clue as to what they're talking about.

what none of 'em realize (and what you probably don't realize either) is that music is as much a drug in its own way as is alcohol or pot or meth or crack: to the degree a particular combination of sounds hits your endorphin receptors just right, you like it; to the degree it doesn't, you don't--it's that fucking simple.

and it's pretty much non-negotiable--i mean, you can try, for the sake of your standing amongst your peers, to get into whatever music they're into, but the bottom line is, you like what you like, and that's pretty much it.

[case in point: i can't even begin to tell you how much more easily the first 17 years of my life woulda gone had i been able to get excited about hard rock--or for the last 17, techno house music--but that's another post for another day.]

i realized this eternal truth about music early on--back when i was a lonely kid in high school, i spent countless hours locked up alone in my room, headphones on, chain-smoking and transported to another world by the music that moved me then. different songs, individually or in combination, would bring on different moods; more often than not i'd get caught up in one particular song and listen to it over and over and over.

these two drugs--nicotine and music--became linked so strongly in my psyche that when i finally quit smoking fifteen years ago, i found i had no choice but to quit music as well--and i mean all music.

why? because as soon as a song came up that i liked, i'd reflexively reach for a cigarette to enhance the high, just like i'd always done in the past.

it took me eight long years to break that trigger and actually be able to listen to music again without feeling the irresistible urge to reach for that other drug.

alcohol helped.

mkf posts a comment

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doesn't really matter which blog, or which topic--tonight, for whatever reason, i'd suddenly had enough, so i posted the following:

you know, whenever [insert gay/leftist blogger here] throws fresh meat like [insert middle-america-bashing topic here] into the pit and i sample the resulting comments, i generally find they're of the sort that most of you faggots would bend over backwards to get hate-speech laws passed to prevent the other side from making about us.

in other words, you guys are no better than the people you hate.

i'm posting this here tonight because it pretty much sums up everything i've ever tried to say in this blog regarding my feelings about the extremists screaming at us from both edges.

in other words: shut the fuck up, all of you.

sober update: perhaps a better title might've been "screaming from the middle."