Bobby Jindal's response to Barack Obama's statement to Congress

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Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. "These plans would cost less and create more jobs." "Instead of trusting us to make decisions with our own money..." (about 4:45)

"instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington D.C." (5:15)

"He was literally yelling into the phone!" (about 3 minutes in)

Bobby Jindal's delivery seems inauthentic and insincere. The Republican party has asked him to prostitute his alterity in order to copycat Barack Obama's non-white exotic otherness. "Like the President's father, my own parents came to this country from a distant land." He did it. So the Republican party has adopted a me-too me-too strategy of peddling in false exoticism in order to enrich the same small group of transnational corporations. I know that that wasn't exactly argued for in this paragraph, but it's transparently obvious that these guys are owned.

Presidential Election

The Clintons and Barack Obama are presented on CNN and FOX as antagonists. CNN ran a story targeted at black women, asking whether they would vote their gender or their race.

It's an old conservative gimmick to act like the world used to be a better place before it fell into its current state of decline, and I don't want anyone to think that I think that the world was ever really that much better than it is now. For one thing, black people are no longer openly sold as chattel. Instead, we have the minimum wage (which it's fucking impossible to survive on, by the way, you fucking capitalist shits). But the way that CNN and FOX are treating this is discouraging and is the sort of thing that makes people cynical.

What CNN and FOX are doing is fucking terrible. Contentless.

Also, the world's markets are going bankrupt. I hope it makes rich people suffer some.

Bill Kristol is still a piece of shit, and anyone who sees him should probably try to at least injure him.

American Enterprise Institute

I want to tell you about the American Enterprise Institute. That's a think-tank in Washington. But what's a think-tank? That's a group of people who figure out what they want the country to do, and then try to get the country to do it.

The American Enterprise Institute was founded in 1943 by Irving Kristol. Irving Kristol would come to be known as a Neo-Conservative, or "neocon," and neocon ideas would be the basis of the policy advice coming out of the AEI. But what does that mean? The neocons are former Trotskyites (more on what that means in some future post) who became disgusted with the free-love movement in the 60s and the opposition to the Vietnam war, which opposition they saw as being un-American and un-patriotic. They were also opposed to the acceptance of blacks into culture, which (as you probably know) was becoming more general in the 1960s and 1970s. They realized that despite their liberal background, their hatred of hippies and blacks ensured that they had a lot in common with conservatives.

Originally, the neocons were viciously, militantly anti-Communist. They advocated war with the Soviet Union (so long, of course, as people other than themselves were doing the fighting). But then the Soviet Union fell apart, and they were adrift. With no enemy to galvanize them, they were irrelevant.

Then, September 11. Bingo. Now they had an enemy to galvanize their movement, and they could try to export democracy (invade and murder people, which the neocons are in favor of as long as somebody, anybody, else is doing the murdering) to an area not too far from Israel, which (Israel, I mean) neocons dogmatically and unfailingly support. (When Pat Buchanan said that Israel's actions in the Israel-Palestine conflict were "un-Christian," neocon John Podhoertz called him an "anti-Semite". This is dumb, and deserves to be called dumb.)

Since September 11, the AEI has had a lot of influence on public policy. You'll see William Kristol on TV on Sunday mornings, shilling for his policies and his magazine, "The Weekly Standard".

Scooter Libby's Sentence Commuted

President Bush commuted Scooter Libby's prison sentence. That's not quite as good for Scooter Libby as a pardon would have been. If he had been pardoned, there would have been no record of his conviction. Since his sentence got commuted, it means that he doesn't have to spend 2 and a half years in jail and he just has to pay $2500 in fines (which is about $5000 less than my phone bill from last semester). He'll still have the conviction on his record.

Scooter Libby was convicted for perjuring himself. He lied about destroying Valerie Plame's CIA career. He did that to protect Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, who probably ordered Valerie Plame's outing (Karl Rove called her "fair game," which meant that he considered it okay to blow her CIA cover, which was an illegal act).

Not that you needed me to remind you, but there's at least two different kinds of law: there's law for poor people (that's you and me), in which we are held responsible for stuff we done (and sometimes held responsible for stuff we didn't do), and then there's law for people who are well-connected or rich or able to exploit reverse racism (remember how OJ got to kill two people and now he plays golf and stuff?). Anyway, Scooter Libby sure is one lucky motherfucker.

Also, Rupert Murdoch is trying to buy the Wall Street Journal, the newspaper of plutocrat assholes. I think Murdoch should cut out the bullshit and just outright buy the English language, so that we have to say "Brought to you by NewsCorp" after every word.

Fucking Bullshit

Probably the biggest story in the West today is that Tony Blair has stepped down as Prime Minister, and Gordon Brown has taken over. Gordon Brown used to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the money guy in the British government, like the Secretary of the Treasury in America), but now he is the Prime Minister. Tony Blair stepped down because the British people hate the Iraq War and resent Tony Blair's having led their country into it. Sixty-one percent of the British public wants the troops out of Iraq NOW, as in today. Blair was seen as the puppet of George Bush, who is viewed in the world exactly the way you might suspect he is viewed: like a Hitler manque.

So that's the biggest story in the world today, but there are other important stories. The American Supreme Court in a recent batch of rulings sided against private citizens (and humanity) and sided with corporations and churches. In Morse vs. Frederick, the Supreme Court ruled that a school principal may "consistent with the First Amendment" curtail free speech if that free speech promotes drug use. I think this is obviously bullshit. Any choking of free speech is inconsistent with the First Amendment. In Wilkie v. Robbins, the Supreme Court found that you can't sue the government when they try to extort a piece of your property from you. In Hein vs. Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Supreme Court found that citizens cannot sue the government for promoting religion through the President's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, basically on the grounds that if they allowed that, then everyone could sue for anything they wanted and it would make too much work for the courts. Moreover, the Court ruled that the President's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives does not constitute a violation of the Establishment Clause in the Bill of Rights (which says that the government cannot establish religion). This stuff just seems prima facie and in toto wrong to me.

Dick Cheney has ludicrously argued that he should not have to comply with federal filing regulations which would require him to disclose his business to the National Archives. He says that his office is a part of the legislature, not a part of the executive. Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) has responded to this by introducing legislation that basically says "Not in the executive, Cheney? Fine. Then you won't get the money anymore that you used to get for being in the executive!" If you don't have contempt for the Vice President of the United States by now, you're an asshole. Go kill yourself. You're the reason that America is perceived as a hateful stupid jingoistic compassionless fat Nazi state. I'm not kidding. If you're one of the twenty-six percent that still believes that Dick Cheney is doing a good job, then I am honestly advocating that you commit suicide. I don't care how you do it; try not to take anyone else out while you're killing yourself unless they also believe that Cheney is doing a good job. You ruin the world, you hateful pieces of greedy, ugly-capitalist, baby-killing, class-warring shit.

Also, I don't think the war in Iraq is over yet. [A pause while I check.] Nope. The war in Iraq hasn't ended yet.

So, with all this going on in the world, what did CNN decide to feature on its Website?

This. This is what they decided to feature as the top story on their website. Some fucking wrestler, whose life is not the shadow of a shadow of a shadow of any of these other things I've mentioned, killed his wife and then himself. Oh, he killed his kid too, and put a Bible next to the kid's body (you know, because of Jesus... I fucking guess. Who knows what's on the addled minds of murderous theists?). And now, " 'roid rage" questions are raised. Well, I for one sigh and say "Thank fucking God," because those are the hard, serious questions that CNN should be raising. Like all informed, intelligent people, I want to know absolutely as much as possible about the wasted life of some fucking wrestling dipshit, and I want to know that stuff at the expense of my knowing what else is going on in the world. I'm glad that CNN is out there, getting the important information to me. Thank Jesus Christ for the precious gift of CNN's serious and incisive journalism.

Tim Kreider; The Removal of My Livejournal; A New Proposal

Tim Kreider
This is Tim Kreider's report on the RNC in New York. This is sort of what the future will look like, and also contains lots of good political reporting.

Livejournal
I deleted my Livejournal because Six Apart, the company that owns Livejournal, deleted many journals which mentioned unconventional sexual practices. I have no respect for Six Apart any longer. Also not respectable: Six Apart did this 13 days before their IPO (offering stock on the market for the first time), without telling their (admittedly young and whiny and probably mostly uninterested) clientele.

A New Proposal
In the interest of making the coming months more interesting, I am announcing my intention to make book (for bets of no more than three dollars American apiece) on future political events. If the world's going to continue to be an interesting hell, I'm going to put some money on it.

MENU OF POSSIBLE BETS
Current Executive Branch Manages to Stay in Power Past Jan 20, 2009: 3-2 against
Roe vs. Wade Overturned before 1-20-09: 5-2 against
Major Terrorist Attack on American Soil On Or Before Jan. 20, 2009: 4-3 against
Republican Candidate Wins White House in 2009: even money (50-50)
Al Gore Enters Race for White House before April 30, 2008: even money (50-50)
George Bush Pardons Scooter Libby by Jan. 20, 2009: 5-4 for
Bush's Newsweek Approval Rating Dips Below 25% by 7-01-07: 5-3 for

All odds good only until July 1, 2007.

US Soldier refuses to serve in combat against Iraqis

http://www.ivaw.org/node/1040

This 26-year-old man, Eli Israel, is refusing combat missions in Iraq on the grounds that the Iraq War is illegal. He asks for everyone to repeat his story, and I want to help him. I also believe that the Iraq War is illegal, and I believe that William Kristol and Richard Bruce Cheney want to wage war in Iran (Condoleezza Rice does not want war with Iraq, she wants to deal diplomatically with them). I do not believe that the Bush Administration will look out for the interests of Eli Israel, and I'm posting this here in the hope that it helps him in some way, however small.

Israel himself says:

“I have told them that I will no longer play a ‘combat role’ in this conflict or ‘protect corporate representatives,’ and they have taken this as ‘violating a direct order.’ I may be in jail or worse in the next 24 hours.

"Please rally whoever you can, call whoever you can, bring as much attention to this as you can. I have no doubt that the military will bury me and hide the whole situation if they can. I'm in big trouble. I'm in the middle of Iraq, surrounded by people who are not on my side. Please help me. Please contact whoever you can, and tell them who I am, so I don't ‘disappear.’”

More information on the hateful bastard William Kristol is available here: ZNet Article on William Kristol.