Bad American

Fortune Magazine interview:

He sits in the corner of a sofa, one black, tasseled loafer propped against a coffee table. We’re in the presidential suite on the 41st floor of the New York Hilton. McCain has come here - between a major speech on the economy in Washington, D.C., this morning and a fundraiser tonight at the 21 Club - to talk to us and to let us take his picture. He is wearing a dark suit, as he almost always does, with a blue shirt and a wine-colored tie. He’s looking not at us but into the void. His eyes are narrowed. Nine seconds of silence, ten seconds, 11. Finally he says, “Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we’re in against radical Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences.”

Not America’s dependence on foreign oil? Not climate change? Not the crushing cost of health care? Eventually McCain gets around to mentioning all three of those. But he starts by deftly turning the economy into a national security issue - and why not? On national security McCain wins. We saw how that might play out early in the campaign, when one good scare, one timely reminder of the chaos lurking in the world, probably saved McCain in New Hampshire, a state he had to win to save his candidacy - this according to McCain’s chief strategist, Charlie Black. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.” As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.

Certainly another ‘Reichstag fire‘ complete with dead bodies of ordinary Americans would be greeted with glee in McCain’s war room. Why does this surprise anyone? These people are fascists and this is how fascists operate.

This line of thinking, of course, assumes Americans are too stupid to differentiate between a false flag attack, incompetence on the part of our counter-terrorist forces, or a masterminded attack by a true outside force AND the motivations and consequences of such an attack.

All they figure is that a majority of the American people, ’soccer’ or ’security’ moms, et. al., would simply stampede in fear to John McCain, begging him to take away the rest of our tenuous civil liberties and throw the entire Middle East into a nuclear cauldron.

And you know, sadly, they might just be right.

Which is why when I read stories like this I get genuinely concerned about what might happen as this election approaches or in the netherworld between Election Day and Inauguration Day.

I suspect there is quite a bit of planned mischief afoot.

NOT that I expect any less from Obama. Should some catastrophe happen between E Day and I Day after Obama wins, I would expect ‘Mr. Change’ to swear absolute fealty to the concept of massive retaliation. Like most Democrats, I would expect him to try to ‘out war’ the cons just to make sure people knew he wasn’t a weak kneed appeaser.

In any case, there’s too much smoke swirling around the latter months of the year not to be prepared for literally anything.

When I claim, as I have in other posts, that right-wingers (neo-fascists) are champing at the bit to ’settle accounts’ with ‘lib’ruls’ I’m not indulging in fantasy. In the following audio clip, talk show host Michael Reagan asks that people sending videos to soldiers in Iraq, and one person in particular, be killed. Listen:

The story behind the audio from Infowars

Now imagine if a LIBERAL talk show host (all eight of them) said that some right winger in the public eye should be “taken out and shot.”

I post these as a warning to all progressives, protesters and other free-thinking people in this county: be forewarned. If there is another ‘coalescing event’ in the near future, there will be people out there, people you may even know, who may be coming for you. I’m not kidding.

But when you’re lying to right wing Americans you can get away with it. They’ll believe anything.

Media Matters

On the June 17 edition of his CNN Headline News program, Glenn Beck falsely claimed that “drilling in ANWR alone would yield 100 million barrels a day.” In fact, according to Energy Department researchers, if the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is opened for drilling for oil in 2008, the estimated peak production would yield, at most, 1.45 million barrels a day in 2028.

According to the Energy Information Administration’s May 2008 Analysis of Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:

In all three ANWR resource cases, ANWR crude oil production begins in 2018 and grows during most of the projection period before production begins to decline. In the mean oil resource case, ANWR oil production peaks at 780,000 barrels per day in 2027. The low- resource-case production peaks at 510,000 barrels per day in 2028, while the high- resource-case production peaks at 1,450,000 barrels per day in 2028. Cumulative oil production resulting from the opening of ANWR from 2018 through 2030 amounts to 2.6 billion barrels in the mean resource case, 1.9 billion barrels in the low resource case, and 4.3 billion barrels in the high resource case.

From the June 17 edition of CNN Headline News’ Glenn Beck:

BECK: Like I told you yesterday, gas is up 35 percent. Electricity is up 30 percent. Natural gas, which most Americans use to heat their home, will hit a record high next month, up 43 percent from last year. Oh, boy. What happens when we hit November and December?

Even with all of that, domestic drilling is still stalled by Congress. It’s like these people don’t even — they don’t even live on the same planet. And this is really too bad, since drilling in ANWR alone would yield 100 million barrels a day.

OK kiddies let’s do the math about how ANWR will save us.

Currently, the United States uses 20.6 million barrels of oil every day.

Which comes out to about 7,519,000,000 barrels of oil every year. That’s 7.5 billion barrels. And the total best case scenario from ANWR gets us 4.3 billion barrels TOTAL and then it’s ALL GONE.

So.

That means ALL of the oil in ANWR in the best case scenario can meet ALL of our oil needs in the USA for approximately 7 1/2 MONTHS. That’s all folks. And that doesn’t take into account how our consumption might continue to increase by the time that oil comes online. It may only give us the equivalent of 4 months of US consumption.

Now think of what we get for that oil. The quite possible destruction of ANWR.

So go ahead idiot Americans and let the oil companies take their last orgy of profits by drilling ANWR, drilling off shore - go ahead DRILL THE WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY and you STILL won’t get enough oil to make this country “energy self-sufficient.” EVER.

But that’s OK. Flail about in our usual fashion. Beats changing our “non-negotiable lifestyle.” Beats conservation, collective action and serious investment in alternative forms of energy, public transportation, etc. etc.

In the end, we’ll get exactly what we deserve. History and science have a way of making sure of that.

In the meantime just listen to lying jackasses like Glenn Beck. America is full of them.

America you make me so proud.

BIG TIP of the hat this morning to the fine folks at Plunderbund who landed up getting linked to Pandagon on this issue.

This is what we’re talking about folks:

Yes, it is what you think it is.

From Joseph’s post on Plunderbund:

I still haven’t heard back from the company actually selling the toys, so I did a little research.

It turns out that THESOCKOBAMA CO., LLC is registered in Utah as a Limited Liability Company.

Ladies and Gentlemen (sit down John), here’s Carol McCain.

Oh no, this just wouldn’t fly. . .

The original store in the (UK) Daily Mail

The pick up on HuffPo

I can’t for the life of me understand the HuffPo readers who say this is not a campaign issue. Do they think for a moment if Barack Obama treated his first wife this shabbily that the Limbaughs of the world wouldn’t be making a continuing huge story about it? Of course they would!

You see, this is the so-called ‘party of family values’ or so they like to tell us. But this scumbag is the man they are running for POTUS.

You know, it’s really a tossup in the Republican/reptilian scheme of things which was the bigger asshole - McCain or Newt Gingrich who had his wife presented with divorce papers while she was recovering from cancer surgery.

But ‘real men’ Republicans understand the need for a ‘trophy wife’ if one is to aspire for higher nationwide audience. A cancer survivor and a cripple simply couldn’t be sold to middle-Americans, many of whom still view infirmity as a punishment from God.

No, what is needed is arm candy like Cindy McCain. And hey, did it hurt that she was fantastically wealthy and helped greased the skids for McCain’s political ambitions? Of course not - in the conservative Republican world it doesn’t matter how you got the money - only that you got it.

And of course, for all of McCain’s war hero buddies, the ones that like to liquor themselves up before they go out hunting tail(hook), who needs a cripple when you’re a handsome, virile war hero? So many women would jump your bones why stick with the woman who waited for you all those years?

It’s like the end of Catch 22 when Yossarian is made to understand that the privileged are not like you and me (after Captain Nately died ‘in the service’ of uber-capitalist Milo Minderbinder’s M&M Enterprises):

1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Nately died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the syndicate.
Yossarian: What difference does that make? He’s dead.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then his family will get it.
Yossarian: He didn’t have time to have a family.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then his parents will get it.
Yossarian: They don’t need it, they’re rich.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then they’ll understand .

And so the conservatives will understand that McCain had to do what he had to do to get where he is. Sometimes people have to be jettisoned, even if they are your wife, for the sake of the mission.

Because as Milo Minderbinder said, even Carol McCain seems to instinctively understand - nothing personal here, just business.

Apparently a distinct possibility.

THR.COM Film - also a remake of Robocop. Auugh!

Which provided comment fodder for the knuckle-draggers over at Libertas:

As with any remake we could spend days talking about how they will screw this up (and they will), but think about how great it could be – it won’t be great because that might help Bush — but having an army of Iranian backed Islamo-Nazis occupy a part of the United States would not only be a rip-roaring action yarn but also an important reminder of the evil ideology we’re fighting.

The whole movie should be an allegory about the hell Obama has promised to unleash on the Iraqi people should he win the election. Great stories ask and answer what if…? What if we abandoned millions of innocents to Iranian backed jihadists? What if we abandoned them because it was just too hard to liberate them? What if, thanks to weak-kneed liberal politicians, those millions of innocents fed into a meat grinder were Americans?

In my hands it would be set in Manhattan because an island’s easier for the terrorists to defend and chock-full of appeasers in desperate need of a wake-up call. The scene with a herd of Greenwich Village liberals being shoved into burqas writes itself.

Is war the answer now, punk? Oh, it is? Good. Then why isn’t it when the people are  brown-skinned foreigners?

Yes, a supposedly sentient human being actually wrote that.

Which engendered comment at Whiskey Fire:

Mr. Harry seems more than a little confused as to just who’s shouting “Wolverines!” or the local equivalent over there in Iraq nowadays.

Apart from that, you have to enjoy how Mr. Harry singles out Manhattan as a place where the inhabitants just don’t get terrorism. Now that’s being an asshole!

Which led to a comprehensive take over at World-O-Crap

Which is why the Iraq war, while a strategic military disaster, has been a masterpiece of social conditioning. We immunize ourselves against charges of racism and imperialism by defending brown-skinned foreigners while accustoming our young men and women to the task of killing brown-skinned foreigners. It’s like softening our hands while we do the dishes! “Blood? You’re soaking in it! HA ha ha ha ha!”

Red Dawn came out in1984 at the height of our modern Reagan engendered hate-on for all things Russian. I remember watching it with my high school friends which were, as I was at the time, fairly conservative. Regardless of that we could recognize pure undiluted crapola schlock when we saw it. We walked around shouting “avenge me!” at each other for months.

If it was propaganda, I didn’t think it was done very well. In fact, I recall a television interview with some of the young cast members who said, in essence, that if such a thing DID happen they would take to the hills or refuse to respond violently. But that’s show business kids, as Steely Dan might sing.

What worries me now is that a remake might well indeed fall into the same kind of movie zeitgeist we’re seeing with “Ironman:” blatant propaganda that would ruthlessly stereotype all Arabs and Muslims and use scenes of atrocities to whip up the hatred of the movie audience. Perhaps Kiefer Sutherland could lead the young ‘Murkans against the jihadists: you know, show them the ropes on how to torture.

Wolverines!

UPDATE: Keith Olbermann makes DD the Worst Person In the World. TERRORIST SCARVES!!

I will now starve before I EVER go near a Dunkin Donuts again.

Huffpo

The EVIL SCARF:

My aunt had a scarf that looked just like this. She must have been a terrorist. No worries, she’s been dead for 15 years.

From the article:

Dunkin Donuts has pulled a commercial featuring pitchwoman Rachael Ray wearing a scarf because Michelle Malkin and other conservative observers thought the scarf looked too much like a keffiyeh, what Malkin describes as “the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.”

No this isn’t from The Onion. This is how genuinely batshit crazy America has become. It’s just a scarf and one that in no way shape or form reminded me of any jihadist.

Now it will remind me of American jihadists. I guess when I go to Canada or ever travel in Europe again, I’ll be constantly having to apologize for the utter stupidity of my countrymen.

More:

The Boston Globe reports that Dunkin Donuts caved to pressure from the conservative blogosphere — and the fear of a mass boycott — and removed the ad:

The company at first pooh-poohed the complaints, claiming the black-and-white wrap was not a keffiyeh. But the right-wing drumbeat on the blogosphere continued and by yesterday, Dunkin’ Donuts decided it’d be easier just to yank the ad.
Said the suits in a statement: ”In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial.”

Malkin praised the decision in her column, writing,

It’s refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists. Too many of them bend over backward in the direction of anti-American political correctness….
Fashion statements may seem insignificant, but when they lead to the mainstreaming of violence — unintentionally or not — they matter. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. In post-9/11 America, vigilance must never go out of style.

Neither must xenophobic hate and stupidity, it seems.

Sorry, no.

Associated Press

Another Bush apparatchnik comes out with a long memoranda in the form of a book arguing he was deceived by the person he flacked for.

Sorry, not buying Scottie.

Let’s run this story through the Bullshit Interpreter ™ shall we? Story in red, my comments in black.

WASHINGTON - Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that President Bush relied on an aggressive “political propaganda campaign” instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war, and that the decision to invade pushed Bush’s presidency “terribly off course.’

Sort of like the Andrea Doria went “off course.”

The Bush White House made “a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed” — a time when the nation was on the brink of war, McClellan writes in the book entitled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.”

When did Scottie first notice Bush turning away from candor and honesty? When the booze and cocaine wore off?

The way Bush managed the Iraq issue “almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option.”

That WAS the plan Scottie. Feigning surprise isn’t your strong suit, is it?

“In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president’s advantage,” McClellan writes.

That WAS the plan Scottie. And you bravely stood up and, for the good of the country, put a stop to this how?

White House aides seemed stunned by the scathing tone of the book, and Bush press secretary Dana Perino issued a statement that was highly critical of their former colleague.

“Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House,” she said. “For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad - this is not the Scott we knew.“

Disgruntled! Yes, that’s all American conservatives need to hear from the White House. Nothing to see here, just a disgruntled loser. Well he IS a disgruntled loser - kind of like Josef Goebbels surviving Hitler and then trying to explain he really thought Hitler meant well. OK, maybe Goebbels is a bit of an extreme example. How about Albert Speer?

Perino said the reports on the book had been described to Bush, and that she did not expect him to comment. “He has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers,” she said.

It’s happy hour and the Rangers game is on.

The book provoked strong reactions from former staffers as well.

“For him to do this now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional,” Fran Townsend, former head of the White House-based counterterrorism office, told CNN.

Translated: ‘. . .  this asshole, after all this administration did for his career, has to turn into a fucking choir boy. Fine - he gets The John Dean Award for 2008. Stupid traitorous puke.’

Said former top aide Karl Rove, in an interview with Fox News Channel, “If he had these moral qualms, he should have spoken up about them. And frankly I don’t remember him speaking up about these things. I don’t remember a single word.”

You know the crazy thing? Here Karl Rove is probably right.

McClellan called the Iraq war a “serious strategic blunder,” a surprisingly harsh assessment from the man who was at that time the loyal public voice of the White House who had followed Bush to Washington from Texas.

“The Iraq war was not necessary,” he concludes. “Waging an unnecessary war is a grave mistake.”

Ya think? I also was told by mommy when I was three that putting my hand on a hot stove was a bad thing too.  Please tell us something that sentient beings do not know Scottie, OK?

McClellan admits that some of his own words from the podium in the White House briefing room turned out to be “badly misguided.” But he says he was sincere at the time.

Sincerity is Linus out in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin. You Scottie were a willing tool and a fucking liar. “Badly misguided?” What they hell kind of a lame excuse is that? Why not say “I willingly drank the Kool Aid and spewed it out to the American public?”

“When words I uttered, believing them to be true, were exposed as false, I was constrained by my duties and loyalty to the president and unable to comment,” he said. “But I promised reporters and the public that I would someday tell the whole story of what I knew.”

Scottie, you get the Adolf Eichmann Good German Award here but you’re still wrong. You’re first loyalty is not to the President of the United States but to the Constitution of the United States and to the people of this country. This is the ultimate act of official cowardice - you told the press that someday you’d tell the truth but when it could have really made a difference for this country, you kept quiet and allowed war crimes to take place.

Do you sleep at night Scottie?

As for the press, I noticed you blame them as well for not making you do your job:

“I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be,” McClellan writes. He also blames the media whose questions he fielded, calling them “complicit enablers” in the White House campaign to manipulate public opinion toward the need for war.

That is true but it doesn’t absolve what you did in any way.

McClellan said Bush loyalists will no doubt continue to think the administration’s decisions have been correct and its unpopularity undeserved. “I’ve become genuinely convinced otherwise,” he said.

Translated: ‘I always knew this was all bullshit but now I need the money the book will (hopefully) provide. So go on suckers, buy a copy.’

Recent interview with Will Mari on Huffpo

Speaking of The Huffington Post, I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be able to take the way they censor comments. You ever notice that some comments get posted immediately while some, probably containing key words and phrases that make the mods pee their pants, get withheld for approval?

Yeah, they can do what they want. But I’m not sure I want to link or post there anymore. They seem to have an advance case of the yips when in comes to subjects like martial law and a proper response to it. if people can go on Fox News and glibly talk about assassination than at least a comment on what those same people might do to curtail the rest of our civil liberties and a proper response to that should at least get a fair hearing in Huffpo.

Anyway, here’s Mike Huckabee talking about his book and waxing philosophic about Republican politics and the American mind, such as it is:

Republicans need to be Republicans. The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it’s this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it’s a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says “look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don’t get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it.” Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it’s not an American message. It doesn’t fly. People aren’t going to buy that, because that’s not the way we are as a people. That’s not historic Republicanism. Historic Republicanism does not hate government; it’s just there to be as little of it as there can be. But they also recognize that government has to be paid for.

If you have a breakdown in the social structure of a community, it’s going to result in a more costly government … police on the streets, prison beds, court costs, alcohol abuse centers, domestic violence shelters, all are very expensive. What’s the answer to that? Cut them out? Well, the libertarians say “yes, we shouldn’t be funding that stuff.” But what you’ve done then is exacerbate a serious problem in your community. You can take the cops off the streets and just quit funding prison beds. Are your neighborhoods safer? Is it a better place to live? The net result is you have now a bigger problem than you had before.

My experience in Arkansas was, a lot of the so-called conservatives said “Let’s cut the budget.” But they wanted to add prison sentences, they wanted to eliminate parole, they wanted to have harsher sentences for various crimes. And I said “OK, that’s fine, but that’s going to be expensive. So which do you want?” You can’t have both, or you do what the federal government has done, and this is where I think Republicans have been especially irresponsible. Their approach has been [to] just kick the can down the road and let your grandkids pay for it.

So they run up huge deficits … but they’ve pushed those costs down to the states, and the states have to eat it, because they have to balance their budgets, they don’t get to print money or borrow. Or the federal government just runs up more deficits and let’s the next couple of generations worry about paying for all this stuff.

Either way, it’s irresponsible, and I think people in America are smarter than that and they know that’s not the responsible way to approach governing.

Alright, so Mike Huckabee thinks he can don the mantle of the holy and somehow convince garden variety Republicans that they should swallow tax increases for social programs?

Mike, Mike, you give your side too much credit.

You know what the vast majority of conservatives in this country think of the poor: screw ‘em, it’s their own damn fault and I’d rather have my tax money buying nifty bombs to kill the sand ni%%%rs in Iraq than enabling the morally deficient losers in our society.

Good luck with that Mike. You should know your own people by now. And no, trying to convince them with a cost-benefit analysis isn’t going to work either. These people will gladly spend whatever it takes to support their own causes- war and greed - but begrudge every penny spent on education, social programs or the welfare of people they think are beneath them.

When Huckabee says: look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don’t get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it.” Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it’s not an American message. It doesn’t fly.

he’s wrong: it DOES fly with millions of Americans. The same people who have no problem walking over (or on) the homeless to get to their jobs every day in this country. And their attitude with education and health care is that they take care of their own and everyone else can go pound salt.

I mean, what kind of cloud cuckoo-land Republican Party does Mike Huckabee reside in anyway?

Still, I like the fact that he’s at least trying to make this case. Perhaps he feels it’s what Jesus would do. The same Jesus that the Republicans always quote saying “the poor you will always have with you” so screw ‘em and build more Raptor jet fighters.

And it isn’t some bizarre form of libertarianism driving the train either. This ethos comes right from Corporate America: it’s what they want. And they compose the power base of both of America’s Punch and Judy political parties. And Corporate America brainwashes and blackmails average Americans into accepting this Faustian bargain. Until their power is laid low, nothing will change.

For example, check out this entry in Joe Bageant’s blog about a group of peaceful activists trying to save the mountains in West Virginia from rapacious strip mining which levels those mountains. They are intercepted by a bunch of ignorant thugs, sent their by the mining companies on pain of unemployment, to disrupt the ceremony.

Read the things these ignorant troglodytes say. And no, I don’t believe we can ever reach them or convince them otherwise - the brainwashing is too deep.

It’s the same kind of right wing thug mentality where idiot biker groups like Rolling Thunder, who kissed George W. Bush’s rectum this Memorial Day weekend, disrupt anti-war vigils put on by peaceful groups like the Quakers - who have been under surveillance by Der Fatherland Security since after 9-11.

And THESE PEOPLE are the ones the Karl Roves need to keep in the Republican Party to keep them in power - NOT the kind of pie in the sky what-would-Jesus-do crap emanating from Mike Huckabee.

He’s trying to ride herd over a party carried by fascists.

Kevin James, a well-connected radio talk show host (of course, a conservative) got nailed by Chris Matthews for parroting the talking points about ‘appeasement,’ based on the idiotic comments of the idiot-in-chief in The White House, who groveled in front of his masters in the Knesset (of which our Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary if recent events are any indication) and grossly insulted Barack Obama who seems unable to prove his utter craven fealty to Israel no matter what he says.

Here’s what happened. Note how James, like most conservatives in the media, struggles mightily to cover up his ignorance:

Here’s James’ page on KRLA radio which advertises itself as “intelligent, conservative, talk radio.”

Of course it’s an oxymoron.

I was canned as a radio talk show host on WJBC AM 1230 in Bloomington, Illinois in 2003, despite good ratings, as a political hit because I came out against the invasion of Iraq and questioned President Bush.

Of course, as anyone who listened to me knows, I would have been able to go on at length about what Neville Chamberlain did at Munich in 1938.

But my cowardly program director, RC McBride, and the cowardly General Manager Red Pitcher, like most American radio management, could care less about having intelligent people on the air. Pitcher, an American Legion/VFW hack, and McBride, a phony liberal, cared more about the powerful people in Bloomington/Normal than putting on great provocative radio.

And that’s what burns me the most about people like Kevin James. I’m sure I could run circles around him. But it doesn’t matter because in this country, corporate control of the radio industry insures well-connected  morons like James will always get radio shows where they can spout their idiocy - as long as his politics are on the side of his corporate masters. And one can say, ‘oh that’s just the way it is.’ Well, then, we’re doomed as a nation to this kind of culture idiocy. Perhaps it’s what we deserve.

Damn right I’ll cop to being bitter. It was the most fun I ever had for pay and I was damn good at it.