Tag: eschaton

Dogbark wisdom

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Two cute woof-woofs from dear old Atrios, at Eschaton. ( I will link to him even though he refuses to acknowledge my existence (I hate that).)

In the most recent bark, he ironically says, Damn those unions for destroying Citigroup!!!. In the immediately prior arf-arf, he says,

I guess the Very Serious People are incapable of seeing how absurd this all is.

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

MONARCHY RESTORATION ACT PASSES IN US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES!

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NANCY PELOSI JOINS REPUBLICANS IN 293-PERSON CURTSEY TO KING GEORGE

BARACK OBAMA ISSUES PRESS RELEASE PROMISING TO BE “KINDER, GENTLER MONARCH” WHEN HE ASCENDS TO THRONE

HARRY REID GOES FISHING ON LAKE TAHOE, SAYING HAIL MARYS

The horrible FISA bill passed yesterday, despite heroic rear-guard action by our own Harold Feld. Nancy Pelosi, the best-looking Republican grandma in the People’s Chamber (who also happens to be the Democratic Speaker of the House, go figure) led the charge. Obama was invisible before the vote and issued a watery piece-of-shit press release afterwards. Harry Reid said some empty nonsense.

Congressman Delahunt, who represents me (among others), voted against. Go Bill Delahunt. (Maybe the 3,342,985 calls I made to his office over the last few months gave him the encouragement he needed, but the action was his alone.)

Well, so, immediately after the roll call was published I went down to the Tisbury Town Hall, into the Town Clerk’s office. There, I made damn good an’ sure I’ve got nothing to do with the Democratic Party. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me 4,345,395 times, shame on me. I told said clerk, “I want to change my registration,” and she said, “Yeah, and I know why.”

I don’t know how it is where you live, but in my little home town, a DemocraticPartyectomy takes less than a minute. I highly recommend the procedure. It does wonders for one’s blood pressure.

After the jump: Democrats–monarchists or fascists: which one of these?

UPDATE: I edited this post for clarity. My points are probably still unclear, but I wanted to be up front about my revisions.

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Noble Cause update: “Kick their ass and take their gas”

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The courageous Cindy Sheehan famously asked the coward George W. Bush to tell her what was the “Noble Cause” for which her son Casey had given his life as a soldier in Baghdad. Bush was too cowardly to answer, of course, but over on Eschaton, Atrios the dog-barker has a pithy little post that pretty nearly sums it up, and addresses Harold’s question about citizen and “real” journalism at the same time.

So we’ll spend a hell of a lot of money and lose a lot of lives presiding over an occupation and using our military to provide security for the private security which will be guarding the commercial interests involved in oil extraction.

And since it’s against Village etiquette to suggest that we we are engaged in an imperial colonial adventure, it will be almost impossible to debate the merits of our policies in Iraq or even have a vaguely honest discussion about what those policies are.

Like Atrios, I don’t think the war was about oil alone. It was about Bush’s vanity and sociopathy, the Cheney/Cheney cabal’s lust for war and conquest for the sake of war and conquest, the Cheney/Cheney cabal’s lust for war profits, and the Cheney/Cheney cabal’s hatred of the constitution and the idea of demoncracy. It was fueled by the infantile jingoism of a lazy and kitsch-loving populace and a reasonable admixture of patriotic altruism on the part of some of the troops.

But now it’s about the oil, mostly. And Bush’s vanity, and the Cheney/Cheney-cabal lust for war profits. But mostly it’s about the oil. Possession of which satisfies all the other subgoals.

Onward Christian Soldiers (and airmen, marines, sailors. . .)

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Over in Fallujah, Iraq, according to the Associated Press, United States Marines are handing out coins bearing Christian messages, especially that old fundy call sign, “John 3:16”, to anybody who wants one, and to lots of people who don’t. That’s not going over too well with the Moslem locals, as you might imagine. But at least our guys are consistent, harassing atheist soldiers more than they do Iraqis. Meanwhile the United States Air Force academy has been taken over by James Dobson’s crew. In fact, there’s a lot of evidence that the whole G-d blessed US military aparatus has been taken over by what I shall tactfully euphematize as “crackpot christofascist nutjobs with napalm and nukes.”

Looks like the plans to immanentize the eschaton and hasten Jesus are proceeding apace. Maybe it’s time for me to repent.

Atrios dogbark blogging

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In March, I went to a gathering of people who read Eschaton, a blog by “Atrios”. This guy Atrios has a pithy blogging style that I like a lot. Basically he puts out short observations about this and that (or thus and such)–much as my late dog Rosa used to just bark at random times. People then leave hundreds of comments on Eschaton in response to the Atrios dog-barks.

Among other things, Atrios likes to bark at his readers. From time to time he barks at readers who want him to give them or their blogs publicity. He barks that it is not his job to give people publicity. When he blogs on this topic he gets riled up like a proper chihuahua.

One time Atrios put up on his blog a photo taken inside his apartment. I saw on his bookshelf books by Douglas Hofstadter. So I sent him a note asking if he would like a copy of my Hofstadterian book, “Cheap Complex Devices”. Atrios did not write back.

At Eschacon, I spoke with him for a little bit. He was drinking red wine & think he was a little tipsy. I gave him a copy of my book, which he graciously accepted, and I saw him carrying it around hours later, so I know that, at the least, he did not immediately throw it in the garbage.

However, he still has not replied to my email or given me free publicity on his blog. Also, hardly anybody ever leaves comments here on Wetmachine. Finally, although Doug Hofstadter and I are now friends, he had not read my homage a Hofstadter yet either. And none of you people leave comments!

Also, this entry is much too long for an Atrios-style blog entry. Maybe that’s why I’m a minor blogger and he’s a superstar. It’s harder than it looks.

Mungo Jerry and the Bear Stearns implosion

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Well this post-capitalism capitalism is a grand thing, isn’t it. Privatize the profit, socialize the loss, and no matter what, make sure the hyperwealthy aren’t unduly taxed (or asked to serve in Iraq), for after all, they’re responsible for keeping this great financial engine running. (Cough! Cough! Sputter!.. .Wheeeeeeee! Crash!) Where would we be without hedge funds and their managers! One shudders to think! I mean, somebody has to play bridge and golf, don’t they??? Free up the magic market fairies! Deregulate! That’s what our great national poet Walt Whitman meant when he said

Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Thank God for the door-unscrewing Ayn Rand acolyte Alan Greenspan and the Reagan/Bush (hey, don’t forget Clinton!) revolutions, without which we might have had by now a decent health care system, peace, prosperity, a recovering (or never devastated) New Orleans, and some kind of plan to deal with the environmental and energy crises that threaten us all. Talk about bor-ring! How much more fun to do things the Greenspan/Cheney/Rove/Norquist/Dobson/Rumsfeld/Bush way! Imanentize the Eschaton, that’s what I say! Hasten the Coming! But whatever you do, don’t blame the rich (that’s “playing the class card”) or the Republicans (remember, whatever it is, it’s OK if you’re a Republican!) Just make sure that the Bear Stearns execs get a public-financed severance package in the reasonable seven figures (but not a dime more for the greedy limbless Iraq/Afghanistan vets who want to go to college–we’re not made out of money, you know!) Or in the words of Mungo Jerry,

If her daddy’s rich, take her out for a meal;
If her daddy’s poor, just do what you feel.

Life’s for living, that’s our philosophy!