the defeatists!

Witches want my semen!

Well, the only thing this doesn't explain is why anyone ever liked any of his stuff...

Bowie told the author, "I'd stay up for weeks. Even people like Keith Richards were floored by it. And there were pieces of me all over the floor. I paid with the worst manic depression of my life. My psyche went through the roof, it just fractured into pieces. I was hallucinating 24 hours a day."

If your weirdness can scare Keith Richards, then you're pretty weird.
 

8 Year Olds, Dude.

Blub. Those kids look about the age I was when I first started paying attention to politics and the news. (Although, back then, it was all about Reagan and THE BOMB!!!) I can just imagine how exciting this must have been for them.

- Lemmissa McEeeewwwewwwwewwwwan, Shakenfartville

the kids look like they're 10-12 or so.  maybe 8-12.

who the fuck was into politics at that age?  I remember in 4th grade doing a fake class vote for President, and Bush 1 winning over Dukakis.  2 kids voted for Dukakis, and we all looked around and wondered who the fuck voted for THAT guy.  all I knew at the time was that my parents were voting for the Bush guy, Dukakis was from Massachusetts and looked kind of mean on television, and I'd rather be outside working on my tree fort.  and also: Massachusetts, especially their drivers, sucked (we were living in southern New Hampshire at the time).  I voted how my parents voted anyway.

the only thing I recall from politics over my childhood or whatever is signs on front yards with lots of leaves and going to the school to watch my parents vote. all those stupid signs and their colors and the names and how important signs seemed to be to everyone left an impression.  it wasn't until college that I started to form an opinion, or rather, was pressed into having to have one.  like I was equipped to do such a thing.  like I've improved over the years.  not!  I'm still a oddball asshole.  kind of a jerk.  so on and so forth.  I put a circle A on my Converse all stars in the 7th grade.  nobody thought that I could actually mean THAT.  "rebellion."  LOL.  

I was too young to vote in the 1996 election while I was in high school.  some of my friends could but I wasn't of age until April of 1997.  I think one of my friends voted for Dole because he said that Dole seemed like a cold angry bastard. . .can't get better than an old angry man as President.  besides, he wanted to reduce taxes!  because Fuck the Man.  whichever Man you set in your sights, right?  we also made fun of Dole around that time.  something about the pen in his hand.  and I mean, we knew it and were right back then: who cares?  these people aren't real to us.  they're physical representations of our collective delusion.  ugh.  ick.  why do we have these people in our society?

when pressed though, I voted for Nader in 2000 because he made sense and Bush and Gore just seemed to not say anything of any import.  I think the Internet actually may have played a role in this.  I remember signing up for a Nader email list or some such thing on the Internet.  both Bore and Gush were skilled at the art of saying absolutely nothing.  what Nader said made sense; he seemed real and prescient.  Nader seemed like a viable alternative to the same stupid shit.  only now do I realize that the same stupid shit is what the majority of the people in this country want.  we don't really vote to change anything functional.  taxes creep along no matter who is in charge.  wars go on indefinitely somewhere.  environmental regulations get slightly more strict until we don't recognize that things aren't as bad as they were, and have no basis for our fears.  we only vote to change the talking heads and face of the government.  Nader was and is delusional.  you're better off not taking part in the process.  I don't go to church to believe in something that doesn't exist, so why should I participate in or talk about something else that doesn't exist?  

I need another tree fort to work on.  

You're Killing your Father, Larry!

first of all, I never have any idea what the fuck Axe is talking about.  right wing lunatics?  left wing hobbits?  there are still racist asshats in this country?  no way!  Axe was going on about this all the while I was glued to the news watching a boy in a balloon.

I was rooting for high tension lines, personally.

imagine though: tens of millions of people in this country were drawn into the story, and awed by the young daring-do of the boy that escaped by himself in a hot air balloon. escape! to freedom and worlds beyond knowing, into the realms and cavernous displays of imagination. we envied the little fucker.  Friday at work I'd imagined myself floating away in a hot air balloon to. . .somewhere else.  anywhere, really.  now I'm back in the cube and craving. . .self-immolation.  what a perfectly futile act it would be to set myself alight here in my cubicle.  

now imagine the individual and respective disappointments of tens of millions of people that watchedballoon boy when they learned it was a hoax.  tens of millions of my fellow countrymen had their heart strings and imaginations and sense of wonder and belief plucked out of thin air, like a pigeon sucked into an engine on the tarmac at JFK. sounds like a win to me!

the Spectacle always wins.

Conspiracy theories in the Republican base? I'm shocked, shocked, shocked.

Dolores O Riordan go your own way
by Zitounet

Damn, it's a shame to waste a song that good and performed that well -- fuck Lindsay Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac! Delores and the Cranberries rule! -- but it oddly makes a point. Not so flashy may be better...but you can really get it wrong as well. I guess I see the current Republican-T-baggers as a cover band on Ross Perot. Who was kind of a cover band for FDR. Keep that in mind...

It's hard for me to feel sorry for Bill "Fisting" Frist and Lindsay Graham. Although, Fist did decide that the nonsense that was being the Republican leader was enough to get him to retire from politics and go back to medicine and Graham is more libertarian and reasonable than most Republicans from South Carolina. There is some content to their character.

Still, Frist is kinda sorta calling out the elected leadership of the party to goddamn do their jobs and provide leadership as opposed to standing on the sidelines, cheering on the incompetent, the crazed, the insane and the blindly ambitious. Noble of him, but I suspect futile. Hell, he then promises he's not running for office. There mofos wouldn't listen to the reincarnation of Barry Goldwater. Hell, Goldwater and Jesus could appear at a Tea Party, and they'd get shouted down. Jesus would probably get stoned...with stones.

So, saying stuff like this is silly on Graham's part.

This past week, the South Carolina Republican was shouted down by town hall protesters for his position on climate change legislation. "We're not going to be the party of angry white guys," Graham responded. "If you don't like it, you can leave."

Ok, Senator, when did you join NORMAL? I know you cringe whenever someone says "Palin" or "Joe the Dickhead" within earshot, but since NIXON!fucking NIXON! the party has come and stayed in power on the backs of a core of ANGRY WHITE GUYS! That's your thing; to quote you ersatz, erstwhile leader, "That's the way we roll..."

I listened to something else Frist had to say on CSPAN, and it was reasonable, rational and something I actually agree with, and about health care. He began by saying that the Obama plan is not socialized medicine; socialized medicine involves the government owning the hospitals and paying all the salaries. He then raves about the overall quality of care in the UK, as a guy who did a year's cardiac surgical residency in the UK. Where was this guy when his doppelganger was diagnosing Terry Schiavo based on TV pictures and threatening the "nuclear" option on filibusters

Could we be seeing a rebirth of principled conservatism based on the ideas of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower and, shudder to say it, Nixon. ( On most things, Nixon was substantively to the left of Bill Clinton. ) 

Well, as  left-liberal-anarcho-Defeatist, I can always trust bad to drive out good in politics; I think the right is pretty well fucked. Between Steele and his lost love, Sarah Fey, we can count on lots of good times ahead. And, it keeps getting better all the time. Up in the far reaches of upstate New York, the conservative Republicans are struggling against the Teabaggers who seem to be channelling Lindsay Buckingham instead of Graham.

Plattsburg is not Manhattan, and frankly, since the Irish-Indian part of the mix that is I comes from there, I'm not sure it isn't really in Northern Quebec. It's colder than Viking hell in the winter, humid and mosquito infested when it's not under eight or so feet of snow and people get married in Wool Shirts with Elmer Fudd hats. And, that's the women. If there's a safe Republican seat, I think this would be it.

Republicans, worried a winnable seat is slipping away, are scrambling. Mr. Boehner, the House Minority leader, promised to support Ms. Scozzafava for a seat on the House Armed Services Committee -- important in a district that's home to Fort Drum, an army base.The Scozzafava campaign issued a flier headlined: "What conservatives need to know about Dede," including such points as "Dede believes government spending is out of control." She's touted her conservative credentials, including an endorsement by the National Rifle Association. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is endorsing her, according to a letter provided by her campaign.

Now given this gal's background, in Lindsay Graham-land she'd probably be a moderate Democrat. However, in upstate, that's not enough for the pure of heart these days. And, there are some oddball quirks..."Even before the forum began, it was clear which candidate had the audience's heart. "I've never met the man, and he's got my vote," Gary Barber, 69, a retired schoolteacher from nearby Au Sable Forks, said of Mr. Hoffman. "He's conservative and he's not a lawyer.'" Well, she's a conservative and doesn't appear to be lawyer either.

In the Journal article cited above, former congressman and current Republican strategist Vin Weber compares the Tea Baggers to the followers of Ross Perot. Well, I find that an interesting comparison. I had a number of moderate right-libertarian friends during the Perot days who were followers; and, I have to admit that his common sense was refreshing and right on. Crazier than hell, of course; and, a cantankerous old coot who would never have been able to effectively govern, but very bright, charismatic and understandably so, with a career based on solid accomplishment. He and his followers had an effect that wasn't all negative and their appeal was populist. These guys, not so much. No hero-philosopher-warrior like Admiral Stockdale has joined the movement; Sarah Palin's soldier son supposedly says he's not a Republican. Compare Palin's "pitbull with lipstick" self-definition with this from the late Admiral, via Wiki:

As his introduction to the large segment of American voters who had not previously heard of him, the debate was disastrous for Stockdale. He was portrayed in the media as elderly and confused, and his reputation never recovered. In a 1999 interview with Jim Lehrer, Stockdale explained that the statements were intended as an introduction of him and his record to the television audience:

It was terribly frustrating because I remember I started with, "Who am I? Why am I here?" and I never got back to that because there was never an opportunity for me to explain my life to people. It was so different from Quayle and Gore. The four years in solitary confinement in Vietnam, seven-and-a-half years in prisons, drop the first bomb that started the ... American bombing raid in the North Vietnam. We blew the oil storage tanks of them off the map. And I never—I couldn't approach—I don't say it just to brag, but, I mean, my sensitivities are completely different.

Perot and Stockdale received 19 percent of the vote in the 1992 presidential election, one of the best showings by an independent ticket in US electoral history, although they did not carry any States.

So, let me be the first to praise the new  hidden, high order Reptillian overlords of the Republican party, and wish them well. Crusader AXE has already endorse Palin-Steele as the Republican ticket in 2012, but I really think that she and Michelle Bachman need to really align themselves with the guys who figure Lindsay Graham is a Democrat and that Bill Frist has been bought out by big money to do Obama's bidding. Sincerity without sense is more than a little disturbing. And, there is a fine line imitation as flattery, and imitation as farce. Given the choice, HANG IN THERE T-BAGS!

Go Your Own Way

Fleetwood Bac | MySpace Music Videos

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/16/frist-addresses-tennessee_n_323639.html

Breaking news!

The Defeatists are definitely in favor of climate change. We wholeheartedly endorse it as the way to achieve the ultimate goal of mass extinction. Seriously, humanity contributes not a lot to Gaia, old gal that she is. If there was a little switch in all our humanoid brains that would just automatically reset to worm food simultaneously, world-wide, it would be cool. Baring that, floods, famine and fires caused by our own stupidity will do just fine.

So, turn on your ACs, run your car for 20 minutes or so to warm it up, get bigger engines, use lots of plastics and don't recycle. Time is definitely on the side of climate change and, dare we dream, the end of this farce. Get on the bus! Not under it.


- Watch the best video clips here

"Church leaders did not respond to Raw Story's requests for comment, but the website notes they will be providing "bar-b-que chicken, fried chicken and all the sides" at the book burning."

Banner day for religious right wingnuts over at the Faith-based community.

Church leaders deem Good News for Modern Man, the Evidence Bible, the New International Version Bible, the Green Bible and the Message Bible, as well as at least seven other versions of the Bible as "Satan's Bibles," according to the website. Attendees will also set fire to "Satan's popular books" such as the work of "heretics" including the Pope, Mother Teresa, Billy Graham and Rick Warren."I believe the King James version is God's preserved, inspired, inerrant and infallible word of God," Pastor Marc Grizzard told a local news station of his 14-member parish.

Dear singularity, where to begin. Since Catholicism pre-dates Protestantism, it's hard for Ratzinger to be branded a heretic, especially since in his pre-Pope role he was the equivalent of the Witch-hunter Profundis, charged with keeping heresy at bay. Mother Teresa was certainly oriented towards works righteousness, but heretic is kinda harsh. Billy Graham a heretic...ok. He was a conservative Baptist, and if you use chronology as a basis for going forth, he's a heretic. From Catholicism. Rick Warren? Really? Mr. GottahaveGodtohavePurposeinYourLife Rick Warren? Makes this Irishman wonder what they put in their barbecue sauce.

Ok, these are snake-handling troglodytes. Notice no barbecued (or barb-be-cued) (barbi-cued would just be crass) snake on the menu. There are other logical problems; besides the whole bookburning thing that makes me think of both Nazis and Disco Inferno Night at Comiskey Park, the King James Bible? Hey, the King James Bible is the best-written poetry amongst the various versions, but, yea verily, that doesn't make it the most authentic. Hardly. The bible is a collection of texts that were in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and who knows what dialectical variations thereof. It's a translation, and probably from a lot of Latin texts. Translations of translations of translations. Confusion of vernacular over centuries by scribes recording stuff, at least from the old testament, handed down from a verbal tradition to a proto-literate civilization. Translated by scholars influenced by the Reformation, the Renaissance and traditions. Under the rule and guidance of the wisest fool in Christendom...who was bi-sexual. Go for it. If you're going to be wrong, be all wrong.

I wonder how Boner Bohener looks at that one, in the light of this one ...

You were born a Christian, not born gay. Religion is not a choice. Or so the spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) would have you believe. Questioned about why the House's top Republican opposes a hate crimes bill penalizing violence against gays, his spokesman said he "supports existing federal protections (based on race, religion, gender, etc) based on immutable characteristics," just not protections for things like being gay -- which conservatives occasionally claim is a choice.

Seriously, do these idiots listen to themselves? Mary Cheney is about to have her second child with her partner who sure appears to be a woman, the child conceived how? Adultery? In vitro? Turkey baster? Is Mr. Spray Tan even marginally aware of his surroundings? Most guys in my own limited, straight experience, cringe at the thought of sexual contact with another man. We're not wired that way. Most women I've talked to who aren't gay have a similar reaction about lesbians. (Interestingly, women don't get the male fascination with lesbians, the Elaine-equipment episode aside.) It isn't like rooting for the Cleveland Browns instead of the Cincinnati Bengals.. . And, how exactly is the practice of religion not a choice? The significant other used to complain that I was too Catholic...except for the whole God, religion, Jesus thing. This is just stupid...What really bothers me is that the guy was educated at Jesuit Schools during the day when logic was part of the curriculum. He kinda doesn't get that that the syllogism doesn't work in this case. Or, and this wouldn't bother me so much as confirm what I really think, the logic or correctness or honesty of his opinion doesn't matter.

And, of course, this piece...from a crazy canary in the coal mine...

"The scary thing is that there are a number of pastors on record as saying they are praying for the President’s death. Can you imagine what some gun-toting paranoid who hears that in a sermon is thinking and might do? And to them the fact that 'the world' likes this black man is reason enough to hate him. You wait. The reaction to Obama winning the Nobel Prize will be entirely negative from the far Religious Right. 'See the world, all those socialists like him that just proves he’s a -- fill in the blank -- communist, secret Muslim, the Antichrist, whatever.'"

Well, we have a well-known and documented history of what Marcuse called repressive tolerance in this country. Except it isn't exactly inclusive. We tolerate violence and insanity, not debate and discussion. I wonder if the gun-toting paranoid succeeds, will Boehner and Cheney and Bush and Steele and Limbaugh and Beck crow or cower? My guess is crow, cower and incite more of the same...in the name of true Americanism...eine Volk, eine Vaterland und eine Gott. Then when the Mary Cheneys and the Michael Steeles and the Becks are being dragged to the pits for execution, maybe they'll remember Pastor Niemoller...probably not.

Fuck people. Incrementally.

Nothing says false comfort like a minimum wage rule. Tying a minimum wage rule to inflation seems like the way to keep it helpful to the average employee who is at the minimum wage, but it really is not. So, the Colorado decision to knock three cents an hour off the minimum wage is kinda, sorta a gratuitous insult. Legally it is definitely what they have to do, but as that great legal scholar, Charles Dickens, had a character put it in the UK version of The Federalist Papers, "The Law is an ass..."

Assuming a 40 hour week, which is more than a lot of minimum wagers get, the decrease will amount to  a roaring $1.20 a week. Roughly $64 a year Before taxes, which are probably irrelevant, except payroll taxes like FICA and Medicare. The impact on income in real terms, a can of coke a week from the vending machine down the hall next to the furnace where they shovel the coal to drive the engines of industry.

Merle Haggard - Mama's Hungry Eyes

Jeffery Allen Cropper - ( Personal Friend Page )|MySpace Videos
Now, I have been privately speculating about salary freezes and rollbacks for a while. This particular issue is probably a sign of something, and not being Paul Krugman , I'm not sure what. (By the way, the post I've linked to is pretty arcane, but take the time to do the math and think. Not a bad motto...) However, if wages drop then demand drops for shit because people have less to spend on shit; if demand drops, production drops; if production drops, people get laid off. Getting that flushed down the toilet of economics feeling yet?

Here's my thought: Mandate a living wage which will be based on the local median minus 20%. The only way to get out of this downward spiral is to sell stuff; the only way to sell stuff besides food and minimal housing is getting more, not less money into disposable income which largely comes from wages in the spending as opposed to the investment class. Bill Gates net worth decreases by 10%, he's still fucking wealthy; increases by 10%, he's still fucking wealthy, and I doubt that it'll have that much of an impact on his spending patterns. Give me a 10% negative swing, and I slow down and do little except pay down debt; increase it by 10%, and some of that will go to spending. Granted, some of that will go to paying down debt, but if I increase my after tax income by $5K, I probably won't buy another car, but I might buy a new Amp and maybe a better layout of office furniture for my home office. Just a thought; but, that would keep struggling musicians, the Line 6 company, furniture stores and Weyerhauser going a bit longer. Just doing my part...

Now, for gratuitous, unwarranted optimism...


Were that it were so, but as former Rosicrucian adept and car salesman Crispin Sartwell once plagarized, "Life is 60/40 against."

At last, a holiday I can get behind!

September 30 was Blasphemy Day and we missed it.   Originally conceived as a day of solidarity with teh Danish Mohammed as a nut cartoons, the UN shot it down in the Security Council because it was offensive to a helluva lot of the people in the UN because they are as nutty as John Bolton. On Acid. Being screwed by Michelle Malkin with a strap-on while doing crack.  Or, something.

As Penn Jillette says, we should all say something blasphemous; he recommends that if you are religious, you should say something to mock your own god, but then, maybe you're not that religious. Problem there -- while he says fuck god! what is a defeatist to say? Fuck Tiffany? Of the Medusa-haired cunt? Not with Rick Santorum...sorry. (Being a goddess, Rick's dick wouldn't suffice for her...)

Damn, now we can be sure the fucking thing won't work right!

Remember the Swiss supercollider? We were building one up in North Texas and somebody cancelled the project but the EU stepped right up to the challenge of building a big hole in a big tunnel and speeding atoms through it as fast as the little fuckers can speed in the hopes of causing collisions and thus ending the world while the Euro is worth more than the dollar. Or something. Or Nothing. Remember, it's largely French. . Solving the problem of the origin of the universe; spending megaEuros on a stimulus project. Well, among the people doing this was a French guy, of course, who appears to be an al Queida terrorist, of course. Being of Algerian descent, of course. Like Camus. Except he's a Muslim, so he'd be more like the guy Camus' antihero in The Stranger wasted because it was Tuesday. Of course. Obviously, If he was a deconstructionist, it would have been too ironic...So, he must be a Sartian Maoist existentialist. Or something...ideologically speaking.

A French physicist with the European atomic research centre at Geneva was charged with terrorism offences by a Paris judge tonight after investigators alleged that he had offered to work with the north African wing of al-Qaeda. Adlene Hicheur, 32, who is of Algerian origin, was arrested last week with his younger brother after intelligence agents intercepted his alleged contacts on the internet with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Oh well, we keep being disappointed by these people. Now, for a gratuitous New Jersey bad ass Stevie Nicks/Tom Petty cover...

When pressed, he acknowledged that he actually had no idea that the day even existed.

From Oslo or some such place, here are the Raveonettes doing Ghost Rider...Because, well...Sometimes, irony is just ironic. Thus the proclamation of days...

The Raveonettes - Attack Of The Ghost Riders

MooPix | MySpace Videos

Presidents, of course, spend no time composing or thinking about these proclamations. They leave it to some Boswell in the White House press, correspondence or speech-writing offices to reflect on, say, Fire Prevention Week and pen documents that begin with topic sentences like this: “As powerful as any force in the natural world, fire deserves our utmost attention.”Indeed, fire does, just as Nordic-Americans deserve our utmost attention, too — or at least the attention of some low-level White House staff member. Who is charged with this duty in the Obama White House? An administration spokesman declined to say. “I see this going nowhere but mocking,” said the spokesman, Tommy Vietor.

We missed Leif Erickson Day. Well, since they got the proclamation wrong --it calls him a grandson of Norway and a son of Iceland when Norway's puff piece indicates he was probably a son of Greenland, a grandson of Iceland, and a great-grandson of Norway, at best. Or, not. Accuracy in proclamations of days is probably a bit of a stretch, anyway.

Now, from all the sagas and tales I've read, Leif's dad was a total asshole. Appears that most of the Norse in early Iceland were, shall we say, overly pugnacious. He was exiled from Iceland and took the family west to Greenland. Which is a fuckova (note the Norse-tribute spelling!) lot nastier than Greenland; the Vikings were spinmeisters, I'm sure. They called the old boy Eric the Red-assed since he was one of those guys who had to be right, particularly if he had a keg or two of that moonshine Everclear-Aquavit in him. Leif was a trader, bringing fish and furs and I assume Ice and rocks to places they were needed like...Iceland and Norway. (I think that when they were looking at mercantilism, the Vikings had a socialist approach even then. "Oh Sigurd, look. A boulder from Greenland; and look at the Ice sculpture! It'll look lovely on the mantle back home in Oslo!)He either was looking for something or the winds blew him and his band of entrepreneurs off course. And, he ended up in Labrador? Seriously? Or Nova Scotia? Maybe Maine? Of course, this was before the great climate change of 1333, so the climate in all these places was sub-tropical. (One could, in a pinch, argue that since sub-tropical means both lower than and less than tropical, you could say that they are subtropical still!) Thus, the great Viking cities of the eastern United States and Canada were established...or, not.

So in honor of a day that nobody knew about and that probably means nothing, here we go with a touching piece of Viking rock and roll done by those Norse heroes...err, Interpol. Here is "Leif Erikson" ...