The Curmudgeon

Yeah- I am posting a LOLcat. Bite me.
I know this cat must be Disco Stoo's- who is THE thin blue line in Minneapolis between all us citizens and the undead brain-eaters.

Complaints will yield a steady stream of images you would rather not see, none of which were ever from goat.se.

Wanna talk for a brief second about the toxic irony that has defined the 21st century? Cool, so do I.

Let's begin with the Smirking Puppet, back when he was just a lapsed addict and over-entitled dismal failure of a human being. At his coronation ceremony (face it kiddo, that's what conventions are here in the States, a long venal paean to the ruling classes) in 2-fucking-000, Bunnypants stood up there and did hisself some speech-reading:

... This is a remarkable moment in the life of our nation. Never has the promise of prosperity been so vivid.

But times of plenty like times of crises are tests of American character.

Prosperity can be a tool in our hands used to build and better our country, or it can be a drug in our system dulling our sense of urgency, of empathy, of duty. Our opportunities are too great, our lives too short, to waste this moment.

So tonight, we vow to our nation we will seize this moment of American promise. We will use these good times for great goals.

We will confront the hard issues, threats to our national security, threats to our health and retirement security, before the challenges of our time become crises for our children.

And we will extend the promise of prosperity to every forgotten corner of this country: to every man and woman, a chance to succeed; to every child, a chance to learn; and to every family, a chance to live with dignity and hope.

Having identified the ravaging horror of prosperity, and promising to give that a thorough fucking-over, Bunnypants went on with lying through his teeth:

In a responsibility era, each of us has important tasks, work that only we can do. Each of us is responsible to love and guide our children and to help a neighbor in need. Synagogues, churches and mosques are responsible, not only to worship, but to serve. Corporations are responsible to treat their workers fairly and to leave the air and waters clean.

And our nation's leaders our[sic] responsible to confront problems, not pass them onto others.

And to lead this nation to a responsibility era, that president himself must be responsible.

So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not only uphold the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God.

Honor? Dignity? Responsibility? Uh-uh. It would be a vastly rewarding experiment to take some time in the coming weeks and months to actively recall what life was like before this feral boy-king and his cabal of ghouls seized power, with the purpose of comparing it to life today.

Curmudgeonly prediction as to the results of the experiment: we cannot trust Republicans specifically and all right-wingers in general with any amount of political power. They set up doomsday scenarios and then drive a bus of predestination into the horror show.

The Curmudgeon offers his thanks to the inimitable Tild~, who graciously created a Crate Label for his blog:

Thanks also goes to T. Hussein Mississippifarian, who came up with the glowing-red eye Ganesha idea.

In case you are wondering, that difficult produce is a durian. Indeed and in fact, the durian is a difficult piece of business, especially for the western palette. Very, very appropos, especially so long as this curmudgeon finds himself in the Twin Cities metro.

It seems that it is not just your Curmudgeon who is noticing the deflating aspirations of "Rollover" Al Franken. T. Hussein Mississippifarian points to a story from the NY Observer which compares the Franken campaign to that of Oliver North in his '94 run in Virginia.

While the similarities certainly exist, a couple of key differences should be noted:

1. The power of the internet had not even begun to find the level of expression in 1994 that it exercises now. Kos, and scads of other out-of-staters, certainly set a tone of coronation for Franken.
2. The GOP lined up gladly and uniformly- just like the lemmings they are- behind North. For all its faults (and don't kid yourself, sunshine, the DFL has plenty of faults), the DFL at least in part paused and considered before stepping, not jumping, on the Frankenwagon. The NY Observer article misses this point entirely, and moreover gives the impression that Al really has the hearts of the DFL faithful. Bull- Franken won the travishamockery that is the endorsement process because he has a huge campaign warchest. It wasn't so much a wooing as a high-dollar mugging with a compliant, cowardly victim.

The point is still well-made that the DFL has in Franken a candidate uniquely capable of failing utterly in a contest that could have (and, let's be blunt- SHOULD HAVE) been a laugher in the other direction.

My neighborhood got an infrastructure downgrade yesterday. It must be another manifestation of Pawlenty's Minnesota zeitgeist (along with bridges falling apart) that road surfaces go from cracked blacktop to loose gravel. If this is some intermediate step prior to further blacktop/resealing, the Curmudgeon reckons that the phenomenon could be called infrastructure maintenance, but there have been no signs of such thus far. Nope, in this day, it's all about moving backwards- which is the only direction conservatives can really travel. So while observing all manner of vehicle skid, spin, and sometimes flat wipe out on our 21st century gravel streets, several thoughts occur.

Read more! »

Oh, no- hell no- the Curmudgeon is not about to bullshit you into thinking he's saying anything that hasn't been said previously, that he's breaking some deep hot juicy story of intrigue. I am just saying that for all the bunched bloomers and the hand-wringing that's going on- what with the New Yorker cover and the tanking economy- we're just coming on to the cutting edge of a blade that will likely run us through several times.

In fact, the pain really hasn't even started to register yet. Sure, the little shit is getting more and more expensive, while the big stuff seems to be worth less and less. Besides Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (let's not forget that combined, we're talking about half the mortgage market in the nation) teetering on insolvency, there's a list of banks in danger of failing. And just because a bank isn't necessarily on that list doesn't mean it won't go tits up.

The talking head newsreaders, and their corporate masters are quick to point out that the events in this last week are nowhere wear as dire as the Savings&Loan crisis of George Herbert Walker Bush's reign. (The Curmudgeon advises against any harboring any illusion that it is a coincidence that when the Bush Crime Family gets the reins of power that the finances of the country suffer.) While technically true, just keep in mind that things are just getting things warmed up with this episode.

In the end, it will be the taxpayers, you and me, who will bail out the big rich fucks who've fucked themselves up buggering us. That's a given, and with that comes a tacit and silent acknowledgment that there is a class conflict ongoing, and the idle rich are gonna keep marching.

Ah, but there I went and said it. Oh well, fortunately, there's some nice hot distraction available.

The Obama-as-Warlord cover cartoon on The New Yorker was a master stroke of promotional marketing-cum-propaganda, cleverly (oh, yes, preciously clever, we're talking The New Yorker, after all) disguised as what could be called 'satire' (yeah yeah yeah, The Curmudgeon knows the cover doesn't actually meet the definition). If it were otherwise, the cover would have addressed some esoteric topic with a similar level of wit. The New Yorker patronage would have perused the cover, chuckled that clucking elitist chuckle of getting the funny, and the summer would have rolled on.

No, this was a conscious decision to lead with this, and that decision had to have considered that the cover cartoon would reach a far greater audience, an audience which does not do clucking elitist chuckles. In so doing, this move also handed a truckful of coal to the right wing noise machine to stoke the furnace of racism that has kept the nation simmering along.

To deny, as The New Yorker has attempted, that the cover decision was about nothing more than satire really falls flat, primarily because to accept their protestations would imply necessarily that The New Yorker is not smart enough to consider consequences for actions. Nope- "preciously clever", "witty", and "elitist" form the triune bulwark upon which the image of The New Yorker rests.

Perhaps, because it could be considered preciously clever, the subterranean intent was to spark, via the outrage, another urgently-needed national discussion, about, obviously race. The efficacy of that possible intent may be questionable, though, since it is just as likely that the right wing noise machine will start a duplicitous chorus of "Oh, Is it Okay to be Racist in America Again?", like they ever took even one pause.

Race is another one of those topics which this country will take great lengths to avoid, but it grows much more difficult when the most viable candidate for President is *gasp* black. This conversation will be long, and it will speak some very hard truths, and it won't get better quickly, or easily, or painlessly. The really scary bit here is that once we really engage the topic of race in this country, it will be impossible to avoid discussing class.

Ah, but I said it again. As needed as it is to address race, addressing the class warfare waged by the rich upon everyone else is just as urgent. However, we can entertain a discussion about race, even if it is largely just a thought experiment; such a discussion about class isn't even viable to that degree.

There's a certain and devastating immaturity in the country that resides in deep denial as regards such immediately evident truths. At least here at the cutting edge, that is. The United States needs to find a greater level of maturity, and quickly.

Yep, I've been silent. Call it a combination of a REALLY bad mood, apathy, and general distraction. Whatever. But Curmudgeonly goodness later this eve.

In the meantime, stay off my goddamn lawn.

So it's the fourth of July, a day in which far too many in the States tell themselves and each other fanciful fairy tales about freedom, liberty, and generally how gawddamn great we have it here. It is an intentionally distracting narrative which keeps folks focused on reinforcing the pollyanna version of what we are and how we came to be that way, rather than, say, examining how far afield our own reality is from the myths mouthed breathlessly today.

The Curmudgeon isn't going to try to make anyone feel bad about cooking out today, or fireworks displays, or anything of the sort. If one has to listen to the marches of Sousa, why not in the middle of summer?

In fact, there will be just a bit more celebration than previously planned in this, and no doubt other backyards today. Jesse Helms, a bane of humanity, has slipped his ghoulish coil and now rots in hell.

A quick reminder, here:
This is a corpse flower- so named because it bloom reeks of rotting death. It blooms very rarely, and only briefly.

This is Jesse Helms, whose death-rot preceded his actual passing by decades. The stench and stain left by Helms will sadly malinger.

Rot in hell, Helms.

It is a fortunate thing that no god-peddlers have found their way to the Curmudgeon's door at his new residence. I am just NOT in the mood for their brand of bullshit. The more organized the religion gets, the more it sprouts a fundamentalist wing, the more fucked that religion gets. Worse than fucked, these lousy ghouls transmogrify into fuckering- just becoming associated with their sleaze and hypocrisy turns the follower into a fucker, too.

And it is hard to get more fuckering than these 'prosperity doctrine' fundie nutbags. God wants such foul creatures not only as prophets but to make personal profit from hawking their watery holy snake-oil. By giving up your 'love offerings' to the Fat Cat in the pulpit, he'll pray real hard for the Big Guy in the clouds to trickle down some wealth to the really faithful. When these sleazebag god-pimps get called to the carpet for fleecing their flocks, though, they'll summon even more chutzpah to claim that their financial records belong to God.

Think I'm kidding you, sunshine? The above is the exact defense offered by Kenneth Copeland when the Senate Finance Committee had some questions about his Mammon-hordes.

No word if Mac 'God doesn't want me to eat cold pancakes' Hammond is one board with this defense or not. Astute readers may recall that ole Mac is bestest buddies with Michele 'The Breeder' Bachmann- buddies enough to let her deliver stump speeches from the pulpit during Sunday services. Maybe Hammond is counting on a different set of hands to deliver him, but he better hurry. November is coming up.

Bastards. Every last damn one of 'em. Here's hoping they all get to be reminded that rendering unto Caesar isn't just an optional activity...


In other events, a burglar managed to liberate some of the flocked relics from an archbishop's house. Or, at least, one of the archbishop's houses. Cool. Maybe that way the loot will actually do some people a lick of good. For far, far too long, the Catholic Church has been way too able to consolidate wealth. The actual scale of this is outright obscene, really, and damn doubly so when these same wads make such twaddling mewls about comforting the afflicted.

If one really wants to find a moral in the story about the burgled archbishop, maybe it's that the Lord helps them who help themselves.

Oh, and finally, Norm 'the Windsock' Coleman's sweetheart deal living in the basement of his buddy and political operative gained an ethics complaint. Now we know at least ONE of the parties with whom Windsock Coleman has been bedding, and it ain't his greenscreened Stepford Wife. The Curmudgeon thinks the time has come for the Windsock to blow outta power.

Back in the time when local television shows had a greater ability to generate their own programming, WHO-TV in Des Moines broadcast The Floppy Show. Kid-oriented and cartoon-intensive, the show revolved around a puppet dog named, yes, Floppy, and Floppy's human, Duane Ellett.

To be sure, The Floppy Show was about kids and for kids. There was no adult content. Floppy would never cease to be delighted by the same damn three riddles asked of him by the kids of his audience- "What's the biggest can in the world?", "What's the biggest pencil in the world?" and "What's tall in the middle and round on its sides?". Toss in a half dozen beeps of his nose, and a cartoon or two, and it was a show.

As a kidlet, the Curmudgeon watched Floppy. Though at that time and in the years since, it did seem as though there was no greater life-lesson to be gleaned through the endless vapid hours of Dixie-cup riddles and b-rate ventriloquism, except perhaps that entertaining children is a laudable avocation.

In recent days, however, the Curmudgeon is thinking there may be one more lesson we can take from Floppy: It may be all very well and good to be entertained as a kid by a man with his hand up the ass of a puppet dog, but heeding the same for political insight is likely not such a hot idea. Using the Floppy model to chide and amuse adults is at once pretentious and condescending, in that Garry Keillor sort of way.

It is with no small amount of sad amusement that the Curmudgeon notes that the SCOTUS decision concerning second amendment rights has the bloomers of left blogsylvania in a serious bunch. The biggest twist, around which the larger knot no doubt forms, is that in another topical issue- the fourth amendment- the wad spins the other way.

On the drool-and-crayon side of the spectrum, they're holding a goddamn parade about the former issue and eerily quiet on the latter.

One could probably expect as much, from both sides.

The Curmudgeon sees a larger, underlying question with these issues- namely, the extent to which the federal government may modify or limit our inherent rights as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights- and notices the inconsistent, and to some degree disingenuous, responses across the spectrum. A preliminary answer to that larger question would be to guarantee and rigorously defend those rights from the government.

That means that it should be damn difficult for the government to surveil, search, or seize individual citizens, and in any case, that process must be done in an open and fully accountable manner. None of this "but 9-11 changed everything" pissy pants, cowardly hand-wringing, none of the "but I ain't got shit to hide" bullshit: giving an institution even a small crack in power over the people on this front guarantees that power will be abused. The whole "security vs liberty" argument is a massive canard, and this Curmudgeon is not afraid to call it such. Sacrificing everyone's liberty for an illusory security is not some sort of grand compromise, it rather ensures a society in which there will be little liberty and the same old fear driving insecurity. You want security? Check yourself into a prison.

A rigorous defense of our inherent rights also means that the citizenry should be able to defend itself on a par with entities which would bear malice against it. That would include not only a foreign enemy, but also a government which has become tyrannous, as well as corporate, private mercenary groups.

In particular, the Curmudgeon draws attention to a particularly disingenuous line of bullshit trotted out by MNObserver at The Cucking Stool; namely, that the right to bear arms was limited by the founders to the sort of firearms available at the time of its framing. It is shameful rhetoric, just as disgusting as a parallel sort of argument ("Should the poor really have the right to vote? It's not like they own land...") from the fascist contingent.

The Curmudgeon would have MNObserver note that the time it was written, the second amendment put the citizenry on a roughly equal footing as an army would have. Over the decades, that equilibrium of power has become seriously, seriously imbalanced. Now, the government and its agents have a vast array of lethal and quasi-lethal weaponry at its disposal which are abjectly denied the people, and the people, well, the big argument here and now is about whether we as individual citizens are just too damn incompetent to be trusted with freaking handguns.

Here's the thing about rights: any one individual may prize one right more than another right, and that varies from individual to individual. One person may prize their right to be secure in their person and papers far more than the right to bear arms; that person is not under any compulsory obligation to bear arms. Another person may prize their firearms, and is less concerned about having their conversations with their doctor surveilled; that person is under no compulsory obligation to keep such things private.

At the end of the day, it is just as important to secure the rights for the one as for the other. And damn us all if it is not high time for both the left and the right to recognize that fact.

Damnit, what an absolutely sucktastic way to start a week. The news that George Carlin had died was the first bit of news the Curmudgeon got this morning.

A string of profanity followed.

Honestly, though, if one had seen any of his recent stuff, one could tell Carlin was not looking to be long for the world. The upside of that was that if anything, Carlin became more fearless with his material.

The downside, well, today is the downside.

In a matter which can only be described as synchronicity, Spotty today discussed a measure of a person:

Spot says that one good measure of a person is to watch whom they ridicule. If a person makes fun of the comfortable, the pompous, or the sanctimonious, chances are that he or she is a good egg, somebody you'd like to know.

On the other hand, if they ridicule the do gooders, the sick or dispossessed, or the poor, you've probably identified, well, an asshole.

It is a rule that is virtually foolproof.

While Spotty went on to discuss two particularly onerous examples of the latter (Katherine 'Turkey Flaps' Kersten and Jim 'WeenieBoy' Lileks), the Curmudgeon would not so humbly assert that Carlin- who afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted with his comedy- was a gold standard of the former.

Yeah, the Curmudgeon knows it is summertime, and summertime is also known as "Slow News Time", which normally culminates in an August where a missing white chick can be a bigger item than the Macarena. The Curmudgeon also recognizes that this August won't be a slow month; it will be filled with China's propaganda parade masquerading as a Summer Olympiad, and endless gibbering bloviation about the party conventions, both Democratic and G.O.P..

HOWEVER, there are nonetheless some 'stories' out there in the news cycle which are more tired than the third-day reprise of a watery chicken noodle soup-de-yesterjour. It is time for these stinking corpses to be left in the boneyard.

- Timmeh Russert is dead. And buried. For the sake of all that does not suck, can the rusty trombone act please end now? I know Chris Matthews is a leather bottom Boo-Boo in search of Daddy Yogi, but for crying out loud, it is time to end this call for canonization of the Pumpkinhead. Tim Russert, Keeper of the Meme, was a swarthy man-whore upon whom this filthy criminal regime could always count for some positive press. That fact alone disqualifies Russert for consideration as a journalist, let alone a sainted one. He's dead, he's buried, let's move on.

-Al Franken was a piss-poor comedian. There no doubt exists vast volumes which document this fact. His stuff was at best 'so-so' the first time around, and this republican carousel of reliving it all again demonstrates only that it didn't age well. As far as the meme that Franken is some kind of Vulgarian- well, expect a Fat Man Ranting to really address that one.

-Bunnypants sucks. He has the anti-Midas touch: call him Shitfinger. And he really, really sucks when he attempts to attend to natural disasters. W is heading to Iowa today, a week late and several billion short, to pretend to be empathetic. He doesn't care, and this criminal indifference is only exacerbated with the pretense otherwise.
For whatever it is worth, the Curmudgeon is off the Impeachment bandwagon. Bunnypants and his cabal of cronies need to be standing in the docket in front of an international court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Curmudgeon sends his warmest regards to all those in California choosing to exercise their rights to get married- gay, straight, and otherwise- today. Marriage is a tougher road than one can possibly imagine, but the risk/reward ratio is nonetheless sufficient.

The 'reward' part of the equation entails a great number of privileges, benefits, and rights which have been denied to the Gay and Lesbian communities for no reason other than they are, well, gay and lesbian. Finally, as a culture, we are slowly awakening to the fact that the previous state of affairs is inherently unfair for no adequate reason.

And the infantile Drool-and-Crayon Crowd will no doubt be soiling themselves double-time over the change. Nevermind that this has next to nothing to do with them. Nevermind that in years past their progenitors decried the idea of miscegenation. This sort of change always riles them.

Really- progress IS inevitable. It can be unbearably slow, frustratingly incremental, but progress does happen. There will be those who can and will attempt to retard, repress, and otherwise avoid any progress- up to and including those who would attempt to regress, but in the end, these attempts result in failure, often giving way to waves of rapid, radical change.

I'd run an independent- a progressive independent- in the US Senate race. Hell, 7 million might get the job done. At the end of that day, the people of Minnesota may end up with a Senator who would advocate for their interests and would have been able to further send a loud message of rejection to the run-of-the-mill political stasis.

Take just a second to ponder that one. No more Norman the Windsock Coleman. No more Al "just jokin'" Franken. We wouldn't have to endure the Republicans' mud-slinging smears and otherwise duplicitous campaigns, no fanciful 'refocused' campaign retorts from the DFL-endorsed Franken.

The only thing that's a safe sure bet is that between November and now, we will be getting a steady stream of Bullshit Republican smear items about Franken, and Franken will be trying to use Coleman's own momentum against him. It will be loud, it'll be incessant, and it will be expensive.

And the results? Very Pyrrhic. Invariably so. Neither candidate will really be able to pass the smell test at the end of the day, but that won't stop 'em from trying.

That is precisely why an independent could enter the picture, and really without doing too much, walk away as an US Senator. With a bar set so low by a battle demonstrating the evil of two lessers, it becomes fairly easy to stand head and shoulders above that fray.