Birthback

It was a bad move to release the birth certificate today. It's never really been about whether or not Mr. Obama meets this particular constitutional requirement to hold the job he does. It's always been about finding creative ways to avoid using the word "nigger".

Faux News' immediate headline was "The White House releases what it claims to be the long form birth certificate." Orly Taitz (who isn't qualified to hold the job for the same reason) is claiming that he has a false social security number. Donald Trump is saying that "he wants to verify the information" and now wants his college transcripts released (you first, asshole). The World Daily News, the fishmonger who claims to be a newspaper, started by saying that this only answers one question about whether or not he is eligible - and not the countless others. One columnist who works there has already written a book that claims that Obama is the child of another couple taken in by his grandparents, and has already said that this changes nothing. Phil Berg - one of the original people to file a lawsuit, now says that he gave up his citizenship and is Indonesian. Others are claiming it is a forgery. Jonah Goldberg has gone so far as to claim that it was held on to for so long without being release in order to stir up the crazy and then sucker-punch his opponents into a guilt-by-association problem.

There's a line in "Total Recall" (the version with Arnold Governator) where the big conspiracy gets finally revealed by Ronny Cox (who played the villain) and Arnold's character is so dumbfounded by it that he proclaims it to be the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard. "It's too perfect," he says. Cox gets the best line in the movie in his response, "Perfect? I amazed it worked!" He then goes on to explain everything that went wrong, which has made up the brunt of the movie thus far. The point is, dude, that you couldn't plan out something like this.

I firmly believe in the President's efforts to defeat the stupid. But this isn't about stupid. It's about people not wanting a black man to be President. There is a base belief in this country that a black man should have to put up with a certain level of humiliation in order to be perceived as a success by the white man. John McCain wasn't even born in the U.S. and he didn't have to put up with this bullshit.

Okay you fucknuts, here it is. To be President one must be a "Natural Born Citizen". Check. The man was born in Hawaii, the son of an American Citizen. Nothing takes that away. Ever. If a child becomes a citizen of another land while still under the age of 18 they are hold citizenship in both places, by law. At age 18 the U.S. makes one choose. No choice had to be made in this case because there wasn't one to make. He is a U.S. Citizen. Also, to be President, one must be over the age of 35. Check.

There are no other requirements, except to maybe have a pulse.

The issue is a distraction, but it's not one that should have been engaged. It's taking the fight to their field and there is no way to win against people who will cheat and lie on every play. It's not going to go away with this. It's going to get worse. You gave in to a group of bullies Mr. President, and you should never do that.

It was a good press conference though. I do wish, however, that instead of the word "silliness" you had used the word "bullshit."

Cheap shots:

As always, Jon Stewart rocks.

Maybe she thinks it should say "nigger".

So pay up you sanctimonious prick.

Stupid is as stupid does.

This is the shortest analysis of modern journalism I have ever seen. It is also the most accurate.

You need to make this a daily stop in your internet travels.

Hey there Bitch™, at least she made it to the end of her commitment to the people who put her there.

Sometimes I wonder if we're shuffling a regulation deck and an UNO deck at the same time.

Every parent on the planet should be issued a copy of this book.

Face it dude, the receipts went down as you expanded the number of theaters. In other words, it dissipated.

by the way, the Supreme Court is narrowly now a Republican rubber stamp.

And because I love you, Nickel Creek

By the way, it's been 115 days since the Republicants took over the House of Representatives, running on a platform of job creation. You can count the number of job bills they've introduced - let alone debated - on one finger. If you add 1.

I stomach L.A.

I'm originally from Los Angeles. I was born there. Although I wasn't raised there, I was raised close enough that I read the L.A. Times, and bled Dodger Blue. I went to UCLA for college. I lived within 5 miles of the beach for most of the time I lived there. As a kid I got to watch a fine minor leaguer named Ron Cey develop into a great talent. I watched bad movies on Saturdays with a soundtrack provided at the commercial breaks by Chuck Mangione's "Land of Make Believe". I watched Rose Bowl games.

I was born to be an Angelino.

That changed in no small way in 1994 when I left Los Angeles for San Francisco, but the real nail through the vampire's suntanned heart came in 1997, when the son of the man who brought the Dodgers to Los Angeles sold the team to Rupert Murdoch and Fox. On the surface it looked like a good deal - Fox owned the TV station where the Dodger games were broadcast already and this would turn into a huge revenue stream - but the very first thing they did was to fire (okay, "move into an office role") Tommy Lasorda, the manager behind the Dodgers great run in the 1970s and 1980s. It wasn't about the game, it was all about money. Having met Rupert Murdoch myself I can tell you that it's the man's only motivation.

A few years later he sold the team to Frank McCort and his family, and if you've been paying attention this year you know that Baseball itself took over the company to avoid having game receipts become part of the moneys paid to McCort's soon to be ex-wife. At the same time the bastard cousins of the great publisher Chandler had wrested control of the L.A. Times into the hands of a downsizing incompetent. When the mantra became to treat newspapers the same way you treat anything with public reporting - downsize and watch the stock go up - the newspaper lost its luster and its prize-winning reporting abilities. It's been in bankruptcy for over a year, and was just bought in a buyout so leveraged that it's likely to kill the retirement funds of the Tribune newspaper group.

And how did this all happen? How do you think?

It's all about the dollar, and the lust for it. Two great institutions of Los Angeles life have been brought to ruin by the house of the rising profit margin. George Steinbrenner's Yankees, as much as I hate that team, he lavished money on the team like it was his favorite grandchild and you have to respect what he built from that. The same didn't happen when an even richer man took over the Dodgers - although it could have. Instead it was to make more money off the TV revenues. The same happened to the Times - favorite and capable writers were done away with, ad space grown, features disposed of - all to insure that more profit was made from the same money.

Somewhere along the line, people forgot that when you love something that you work with, it can pay off better than any other type of effort. We've designed our society to do the same. No wonder it seems like we suck so much lately.

And alas, the bad movies run on the weekends no longer have Chuck Mangione either. Sometimes, you have to remember to simply have joy. That's why I've been gone for the past couple of weeks. I rant well, but I prefer to not have anger in my life.

It's why I'm an ex-Angelino.

Cheap shots:

Get you passports now, while you still can.

Mittens mucks it up.

Divorce!

Buh-bye you racist fuck.

Someone please point Dan Ackroyd to this article.

Hockey is tough.

Chuck Norris doesn't plagiarize. Other articles are so intimidated by his manly roundhouse typing that they insert themselves into his articles.

And so it begins.

So you think that maybe, just maybe, we overreacted just a bit?

Just what was he smoking when he said that?

And because I love you, Chuck Mangione

Atlas kneed in the face

You cannot get better snark than this, which I quote in full. After you've read this, you should go to http://sarahproudandtall.com/, read her fascinating life story, and friend her on facebook. Enjoy:

I can barely credit that they have made a movie from that turgid nonsense by Ayn Rand.

I have about eighteen copies of “Atlas Shrugged” – all signed in that self-consciously spiky handwriting of hers.

Every Christmas from 1957 onwards, a present would arrive from Ayn by ordinary post. It would be wrapped in festive newspaper, usually with a gift-tag recycled from last year, and every fucking time it would be a fucking copy of fucking Atlas fucking Shrugged.

They’re good for weighting down decoupage projects, although when it comes to slugging a nurse over the head when I want to sneak out to buy booze, nothing beats my signed first edition of “The Fountainhead”. Mind you, it might be easier just to read it to them. Whoo, what a stinker it is. Temazepam in libric form.

I do remember one year, however, when Ayn delivered the obligatory copy in person. It was 1959, or perhaps 1960. Frankly, I don’t care – I have found it’s better to leave the 50s and early 60s as an undifferentiated blur in my memory anyway.

My husband Keith and I were on a trip to New York for Christmas. We were staying with dear Bitsy and Freddy Trump, of course. Bitsy had organized her usual pre-Christmas dinner at the Four Seasons.

She was never content with just the Pool Room or just the Grill Room, so she always booked the whole place. Whenever she did, she’d pay the staff extra to leave the doors open, and then when people came in to ask for a table they had to say, “Yes, we are open, but there is no table for you. Off you fuck.” It did wonders for that place’s reputation. Two weeks after Bitsy’s first Christmas party, the Four Seasons was shooing the punters off with sticks, and there was a two week waiting list just to be sneered at by the maître d’.

Anyhow, there were just 20 of us for dinner sitting at a big table in the middle of the Pool Room. Bitsy had seated me next to her, which was fine, but bloody Ayn Rand was on the other side of me, with the usual pinched expression she always had in the company of the genuinely rich or the genuinely talented, dressed as usual like a marxist lesbian librarian, and clutching this year’s copies of that fucking book.

I had rolled my eyes at Bitsy when she told me about the seating plan. However, Bitsy explained that she couldn’t sit Ayn anywhere near Norman Mailer or he might go off with his penknife and that Jackie Kennedy had sworn to punch Ayn in the face next time she saw her after Ayn made that unfortunate quip about Gore Vidal and a torpedo boat captain. As a result it fell to me to sit next to her, if only because Bitsy knew I could distract Jackie with an oxycodone bottle if she got too close to our end of the table.
It was a lovely night.

Mailer was in good form and didn’t stab anyone, although I noticed him giving Gore the stink eye after the soup course. Capote got really annoyed and walked out after Gore managed to pick up a particularly cute, blond waiter and have him in the cloakroom, and Jack Kennedy smacked Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. in the eye during dessert, but then made it up to Bitsy by doing his famous elephant imitation. He used to… well, let’s just say that Jack was never shy of waving his prehensile trunk around.

Ayn was pretty quiet all night. She was too busy stuffing everything she could reach into that enormous handbag of hers. That night, by my count, she managed to snaffle five or six spoons, two bread plates, a salt shaker and a gold lighter that Jackie took her eyes off for a moment too long.

After coffee, Gloria Vanderbilt brought out the really good blow and the party took off. Robert Frost read a frightfully dirty version of “The Road Not Taken”, then Gore persuaded his waiter friend to take off his underwear and give it to Keith, and then the rest of the dinner is eclipsed by a discreet and attractive transition effect, probably accompanied by some quiet tinkling music or a nice swooshing sound.

At the end of each Christmas party, Bitsy always used to leave her tips in a pile of little envelopes on the table, one for every staff member and with their name handwritten on the front. Waiters liked working Bitsy’s parties – she was a good tipper, and sometimes you got to sleep with Gore Vidal.

Anyway, Gloria and I had said our goodbyes and had wandered off to the restroom to re-powder our noses before setting off into the night. After about three lines each, we bounced out of the stall, bounced over Gore who was huddled in a corner with what was either waiter number three or Jack Kennedy in half a busboy’s outfit, and strolled back into the restaurant.

Everyone had gone home except Ayn. She didn’t see us come back in and, right in the view of all the staff who were cleaning up, she sidled over to the table, grabbed the little bundle of tips and stuffed them into her pocket.

Ayn looked around, and then gasped when she saw us right behind her. She started to say something but got cut off when Gloria punched her right in the stomach. She fell straight down like Teddy Kennedy on a vodka bender, and I managed to get her in the head with my knee as she fell.

We left her lying there for the waiters to pick over as they pleased.

I hope they all wore gloves.

Kick Lucy

So it's all going to boil down to the riders. Budget numbers have been essentially agreed to, depending upon who you believe, but the riders are killing the deal. The riders say we can't use the money to pay for Planned Parenthood. The riders say we can't use them to pay for abortions - even if the money doesn't come from the federal government. The riders say we can't use the money to cover the Environmental Protection Agency. The riders want to ban gay marriage in Washington D.C. The riders de-funds the Consumer Watchdog organization Obama set up. The riders put limits on the FDA. The riders prevents implementation of a consumer products complaint database. The riders prevent the Department of Education from implementing new rules for college loans. The riders put a moratorium on any payments made to people who have successfully sued the government and won. The riders say that that $1 you can donate to help fund Presidential Elections on your taxes can't be spent. The riders say that Health Care Reform cannot be implemented. The riders say no prisoners can be released from Guantanamo. The riders prohibit the ATF from investigating militia groups and persons who are stockpiling weapons. The riders shut down programs for the elderly and persons receiving financial assistance for housing. The riders prohibit pay raises for workers in hazard zones overseas. The riders block Net Neutrality. The riders de-fund the Job Corps. The riders prevent giving fresh fruits and vegetables to children who have subsidized school lunches. The riders say that the moneys from the recovery act cannot be used for signage, new energy, and if you haven't already spent it then it must be given back. The riders say that NASA cannot speak with China. The riders take away the salaries of every "Czar" in the White House.

They're taking hostages again.

This time, Mr. President, please don't cave in. The last time you negotiated with the Republicants in congress you likened it to them taking hostages, and you paid the ransom in order to keep things going. Well, they've done it again and they're not going to stop unless you crush them. So fucking crush them! The Republicant party controls 1/2 of 1 branch of government. That's all. It's obvious that our Speaker of Orange has little control over the people he is supposedly leading, so this is your moment to actually do something - lead.

Yes, the government is probably going to shut down. Yes, a large number of people are going to be hurt by this, probably including people I know personally. But it's not your fault. Every time you've extended an olive branch, every time you've compromised, the Republicants have moved the goalposts. Lucy keeps on pulling the football away.

Do you honestly think that anyone would get overly upset at Charlie Brown if he decided, just once, to kick Lucy? Sure, some people would - but most of us have been waiting decades for him to do it. Please, Mr. President, don't make us wait that long - we don't have that kind of time. Do it. Make the opposition either put up or shut up - you gain the advantage either way.

Come on Mr. President, kick Lucy.

Cheap shots:

Infrastructure matters, and is the solution to many of our problems. It's certainly cheaper than this.

Just how many ways can the Governor of Wisconsin fuck this up?

Movies condensed into a single frame.

Mike Huckabee might be the most dangerous man in America.

Gold from Jesus' General.

We say a preliminary goodbye to Glenn Beck with a quick look at his brain.

Yes, dude, you're a racist.

And so are all of you assholes.

A good reason to avoid Mississippi.

If Mr. Monsanto Scalp ™ is the ideal Tea Party Candidate, then maybe you should re-examine what the whole Tea Party thing actually means.

Two.

Seniors, here is the shorter version of Congressman Ryan's budget proposals: "Fuck you".

Someone needs to get better at Photoshop.

So, how long have you been a member of the Klan?

And because I love you, Rainbow

Did you miss me?

Even I'm surprised that I took a week off. I just didn't have anything to say. Not that anyone is reading this much. Sadness.

/emo

So today Barack Obama announced that he is running for re-election. No real shock there. there doesn't seem to be anyone in the Republicant party who will run against him, but I expect that will change shortly. Tim Pawlenty released another one of his Michael Bay-produced commercials today, so eventually I expect him to run. Or take a job at Universal. Let me tell you right now, I'm going to vote for him and support his run.

Yeah, I've given Obama some grief in my writings. He's not liberal enough. He compromises before any expectation of compromise is sought. His rhetoric and his actions are sorely mismatched. But the alternative is so much worse. I'm not talking about the lesser of two evils, but the difference between a man who is trying what appears to be his best verses a selection of people whose sole intent in life seems to be to destroy the country.

They want to be rid of Medicare within a decade. And yet these are the people who claimed that Obamacare would take money from Medicare. They're fucking liars. They want us to take the war to Quadaffihoweveritsspelled in Libya. Quite frankly, I'd rather have a foreign policy that thinks more than 45 seconds ahead. They want to get rid of Planned parenthood. They want to get rid of Pell Grants. They want cuts to Social Security - none of these things are necessary or desirable, unless you're a mean fucker.

They also don't like trains much, which seems to point to unhappy childhoods. Growing up I didn't know anyone, of any political stripe, who didn't love trains.

For all the things I don't like about the Obama administration, he's still managed to get one hell of a lot done. It hasn't been quick or easy, but progress has been made, and we do not need or want it stopped or taken in another direction. The progress that has been made could be easily wiped out and if we keep Obama in place then we keep this erosion in check.

Cheap shots:

Who knew that murdering 11 people paid so well?

Our Speaker of Orange appears to be getting ready to channel an episode of West Wing.

Hey Terry, why don't you go do this in Afghanistan?

He's Batman! (Spoken in an Austrian accent)

The "M" of "Run DMC" gets his due. And so does one of the best rebounders in history.

And because I love you, Sisters of Mercy