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Is That A Bomb In Your Underpants? Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

[ Add A Comment ]Posted on January 10, 2010 by admin in Politics

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Whether or not you think the underpants bomber was a terrorist Depends™ on your point of view, I guess. Although his crime was Hane™-ous, we felt no Fruit of the Boom™.


Oddly, this book was NOT
authored by Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab’s children.

I haven’t found terrorism and politics this much fun since 2006, when prankster John Hargrave stuffed a dildo in his pants before boarding a flight, just to see what would happen. As someone who – every single day – is finding himself a little further outside the value system of either political party in America, I’ve been finding it easier and easier to be amused rather than angered by what’s going down in this country. Especially things like paid dillweed Larry Kudlow of Politico ranting about how Obama should ix-nay the ending-spay, as if the Bush gang didn’t do anything to start the biggest spending spree in US history. Or Rudy Giuliani claiming that the date September 11, 2001 was magically not a date that was on the calendar during the Bush administration. It’s Rudy’s gaffe that I find most amusing, and I don’t care that he admitted his error later. The original statement is what most xenophobic hillbillies with cable will remember. But the thing that I find really funny about it was that he was suggesting that a lone looney with fireworks in his undies was a terrorist. C’mon people. The serious press is already calling him the “Underpants Bomber”. And if you don’t believe he was a confused and inept individual acting on his own, I suggest you download and read his collected rantings that had been posted on Islamic Forum Gawaher.com; Wired has graciously provided them with a link to a zip file in their recent piece Analyze This: The Mind of the Underpants Bomber. And never mind all that. Let’s not forget he was flying into DETROIT, for cryin’ out loud. Obviously Rudy’s never been to “The Big D”, or he’d know that the nation has nothing to worry about from an undies bomber entering HERE.  We’d shut that sh– down in NO time.

Whatever Will We Call This Decade?

[ 3 Comments ]Posted on December 10, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Help me out here, ’cause I got nothin’. Zero. Nil. Zilch. Nada. Nought.

Well, as the year and the decade come to a close, it’s time to start rounding up all those lists of the best of the….oh wait. Ten years have passed, and we still haven’t decided on a name for the friggin’ decade? The oughts? The noughts? The O’s? Nothing seems to quite work. Which is perhaps appropriate, the decade began with a bunch of nothing; the Y2K bug was a big no show, the first election of the decade was a zero sum game, and the biggest stars of the decade were genuine nobodies. Calling the decade the “oughts” won’t happen, but might be fitting for a few reasons. It’s a word that no-one knows, for a decade that has no identity, and it has two silent letters in it. Probably the only hope for naming these ten years is for someone to nail the character of the decade the way that some people refer to the 70′s as the “Me Decade”. And never mind the name, how will the decade be remembered? If the 70′s were disco, leisure suits, The Joy of Sex and Ford Pintos, the 80′s yuppies, Reagan, and Electropop, the 90′s infohighways, grunge, and school shootings, how will we characterize 2000-2009? It’s never what you think it will be. The seventies were probably most influenced by Nixon and the oil embargoes, but we remember disco balls and polyester. I think we’ll be surprised that everyone will forget the whole Bush-driven annihilation of privacy rights and wars of aggression, the bank bailouts and corruption (I bet you already forgot all about Enron, didn’t you!), and remember Susan Boyle. What do you think? What should we call the decade? What will we remember about it? I mean, what will the Time Life Greatest Hists of the 80′s, 90′s, and _____ be called? If you need a refresher, Newsweek has provided the decade in seven minutes below: Read the rest of this entry »

Videocracy: Media Control & Mind Control

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on September 12, 2009 by admin in Popular Media

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

How Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi controls public sentiment by controlling television

I’m looking forward to seeing Videocracy, in spite of the fact that many sources – Variety, for instance – are giving it rather mediocre reviews. The film, by Swedish film director Erik Gandini (who also brought us Gitmo – The New Rules of War), explores the evolution of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s political power in Italy, which has largely been fueled by his near-total control of the media. Although most early reviews describe the movie as being light on hard facts and meandering in content, I’m looking forward to it the way one might look forward to a Michael Moore film: the facts may be skewed, there may be a significant lack of objectivity, but the subject matter is certain to provoke some thoughtful conversation, and probably needs to be brought to the broader public’s attention. I personally knew a little about Berlusconi’s almost cartoonish gangster/macho Italian style of leadership, but was completely ignorant of the fact that he had such a tight grasp on Italian television. After the bizarre shift in American values over the past decade, largely fueled by a media that catered to the propagandizing of the Bush administration, one can almost imagine one or more of the NeoCons having gotten their inspiration while vacationing in Italy and watching Berlusconi in action. If you doubt the power of television being manipulated as a powerful tool to shape popular sentiment, review and ponder some of the campaigns distributed by the Ad Council over the last few decades. More recently, the spots created early in the Bush administration’s paranoia-inducing “war” on terror, spots like those in the “What if America wasn’t America?” campaign – like Library, Diner and Church – helped convey that feeling that some mysterious enemy was trying to steal our freedom and we needed to go get that enemy, even if we had to create it. Remember, the Ad Council also brought us Rosie the Riveter, Smokey the Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog, and the Crash Test Dummies, some of the most enduring images in American popular media. Although the campaigns were all brilliant in their own ways, one has to wonder if their sheer pervasiveness has perhaps not perhaps been the more important factor in their success. If, like I am, you’re obsessed with this kind of media, the Ad Council has a YouTube Channel. And look for Videocracy in limited theater release until it’s available on DVD. In the meantime, I’m going to watch the moronic Idiocracy again, to prepare myself for the coming Idiocalypse. Read the rest of this entry »

Obama’s First One Hundred Daze

[ Add A Comment ]Posted on April 11, 2009 by admin in Politics

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

Is Obama our hope for the future, or has he pledged himself to Satan?

Clearly, we haven’t even reached the traditional 100 day marker of a new administration, but personally, I border on feeling like I was chumped again. Don’t get me wrong, I in fact voted for the man. And I believe in my gut that he’s a good person, with good values. Which is why I’m concerned. He’s only 47 years old, and swimming in a shark tank of Washington insiders. Talking to a friend the other day, we agreed that maybe Obama needs to get all FDR on their ass, so to speak. Jon Stewart recently made light of the conservative media’s desperate assertion that Obama’s a tyrant. But in a way, I think we need a tyrant. Not a demented, imperialistic fiend like Dick Cheney, but a single, solid voice that will speak about what we all know is the right thing, and galvanize the heart of our country. In the meantime, if the Obama administration doesn’t stop being more like the Bush administration than the Bush administration was – by doing things like expanding the Bush era State Secrets doctrines (it started in January, and is only getting worse) – I’m gonna have to start believing the hype about Obama’s pledges to Satan. Never mind his bowing to Saudi King Abdullah, I’ll accept that as a simple protocol gaffe, one that hardly compares with the kind of crap Prince Philip pulls on a regular basis. But seriously, what do you think? Can Obama handle the current state of affairs?

Bush War Crimes Trial Preparations

[ Add A Comment ]Posted on September 13, 2008 by admin in Politics

Saturday, September 13th, 2008

Who ever heard of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover?

If you’re anxious to see members of the Bush administration prosecuted for war crimes, check out the live stream at left from the “convention” put together by Lawrence Velvel, the dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. Velvel describes the event as “…a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth…”. Sounds like a party to me. The conference is only taking place September 13 from 9:00 am to 5:15 pm EST and on the 14th from 9:00 am to 2:30 pm, so if you miss it, the video should be archived here

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