Target has always been a corporation who has been kinder than many toward their gay and lesbian employees. For you to now be the largest contributor to a disgustingly homophobic organization such as MN Forward, you have shown your true colours at last.

I have been a faithful customer of Target’s for many, many years. No more. You will not suppress the rights and freedoms of other human beings with my dime. My refusal to patronize your business may not mean anything to you, but there are a lot of people out there just like me who will refuse to do business with you as well, and together we will make an impact.

You and your support of such reprehensible, anti-gay, homophobic cretins will lose. Someday, gay people all over this country will have the right to be an equal human being in the eyes of the law of this land, even if people like you may never accept it.

You should be ashamed and disgusted with what you have done today. No amount of backpedaling will excuse you. The damage is done, and you are forever changed in my eyes and the eyes of millions of people all across this country.

I will leave you to do business with the kind of people you clearly prefer to be associated with: The Teabaggers, wingnuts, religious fundamentals and other scum of humanity whose sole purpose is to make the lives of anyone who is not exactly the same as they are as miserable as possible.

You will fail. You and your ilk shall not prevail, and I, for one, cannot wait to stand with my gay brothers and sisters when victory against people like you has been achieved at last. I will stand for humanity and equality and tolerance. To you I will leave the hate and the poison and the bitter gall of discrimination and suppression of rights and liberties. May you rot in the offal of your kind.

http://www.seattlepi.com/business/1310ap_us_corporate_donations_backlash.html

Joseph Alois Ratzinger, better known to the mindless as Pope Benedict XVI and to the geekful as Pope Sidious, got his job largely as a sympathy fuck after years of faithful and ruthless service under JPII. “He’s almost 80, for fuck’s sake,” they said; “Give him the job and shut him up already. Do you really want to sit around and listen to him bitching until he’s dead?” In a way, I don’t blame them. The Catholic Church is not exactly short on time.

Benedict XVI is a shriveled-up, hate-mongering bastard who has no understanding of reality whatsoever. He has no idea how real people live in the real world and if he did he would have zero compassion for anyone anyway. He is a conservative’s conservative, going even further than JPII did in his totalitarian mind-set. He is flatly opposed to anything that would be of any real benefit to anyone, honestly, and if there really were a God, and that God was his boss, the first thing you’d have heard the day after they put him in the big chair was a resounding, heavenly YOU’RE FIRED! that would have made Donald Trump’s rug spin in sheer delight like a Three Stooges gag.

Benedict, flush with his successful reversal of Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson’s excommunication and Benedict’s own subsequent denials of knowledge that the man had been excommunicated for being what to me is tantamount to a Nazi-sympathizing douchebag (yeah, okay, Benedict — you aren’t even bothering to try, are you), has deigned to grace the continent of Africa with the papal presence. It is his first visit.

Now, you would think that after the Williamson fiasco the papal handlers would have tried to coach him a bit on at least faking it enough to keep the fact that he’s a walking pile of raw sewage from being too glaringly obvious to the public at large, but no — the first thing Benedict did after his nifty red-leather-clad toes hit the dirt in this benighted land of woe, death, disease and war was to reiterate his edict against the usage of condoms.

Yes, in a country where HIV/AIDS has ravaged more people than anywhere else in the world, where the papal voice speaks with momentous authority, this man of God has seen fit to counsel these people against the usage of condoms because — and this is their rule — sex for any reason besides procreation is a sin.

Apparently urging people to engage in life-threatening activities without properly protecting themselves is not a sin, though. As long as you’re fucking to make babies, what? God will protect you from AIDS? Is this the message? If that’s the truth and God protects the righteous, then why, as another commentator pointed out, does Benedict go nowhere without an armed security detail? Surely God would protect the pope, his representative here on Earth, the one human being through whom he inflicts his holy will, from the dangerous madmen who would seek to cause him harm? Why don’t you ditch that crack armed detail, Ben, old boy? God will protect you!

No?

Yeah, I didn’t think so. But it’s perfectly acceptable for this monstrous hypocrite to condemn these people to horrible, prolonged death, though. That’s okay, because condoms are a sin, and if you do happen to die at least you’ll go to Heaven because you didn’t wear one of those filthy, God-flouting sperm catchers on the end of your willie. Got it? Me either.

I don’t know — maybe it’s just me, but why anyone with even the barest modicum of intelligence and self-respect would listen to anyone like that is simply beyond comprehension. These people need help. They are drowning in a sea of hopelessness. The spiritual leader of the Catholic faith chugs out to them in his golden tugboat and what does he throw them? An anchor. That’s kind of tantamount to the gentle shepherd protecting his flock by hiring a bunch of starving wolves to help him guard the perimeter.

How this man can live with himself stopped being a question I kept asking a long time ago. However he manages it, it’s clear that he manages well. What I still can’t get past, though, is why anyone listens to him in the first place — and not only listens but defends him. Why does this man hold any sense of real power or importance anymore? Why does his faith, or any other, continue to hold such sway over the human population of this planet? The small good they influence is so far outweighed by the havoc and devastation they wreak that it’s just mind-blowing to me that it can continue as long as it has.

You know, you can believe what you want to believe. I’ll defend your right to believe it, even if I think you’re a weak-minded asshole. It’s not my business to tell you what to think, even if I spend my time telling you why I think you’re wrong to think it.

I draw the line, though, when what you think becomes harmful or dangerous to other people. I have to admit here think that I think the pope going to Africa and telling people not to wear condoms because it’s a sin is one of the worst moral transgressions I’ve ever heard of for someone speaking in any capacity, much less the pope doing it in the name of God. People are not going to stop fucking because the pope told them it’s a sin, but they’ll find it very easy to fuck without a condom because there are probably only six condoms on the entire continent of Africa anyway, and four of them are used already.

There are more than 22 million people in Africa who are infected with HIV. There are more than a million and a half deaths from HIV/AIDS every year in Africa. There are more than 11 million children in Africa who have been orphaned because of this disease. This disease which is easily spread through unprotected sex — such as sex without condoms. Condoms have been proven to greatly reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS. And this happy jackass wanders off to Cameroon and makes a papal declaration of death in the name of his pointy gold hat and the big cheese in the sky.

People are going to listen to him. They are going to use him as an excuse to negate the education and advice of the health and relief organizations who have been tirelessly working in their country to try to stop and stem and reverse this campaign of monstrous, fatal stupidity on behalf of the Catholic church and the Bush administration, among others. Man, many Africans will listen to the pope before they listen to the health worker who cautions them earnestly because they foolishly, blindly, stupidly believe that the pope speaks for God, and that God speaks through the pope. And they will get sick and they will die and their children will continue to be orphaned by the millions.

I wonder what Benedict would do if those 11 million children showed up on his doorstep, many of them ravaged by HIV/AIDS themselves, holding up their wooden bowls in their rotting fingers and asking for more gruel. He’d probably ignore the corpses before his door until they were forcibly pointed out to him and then act surprised that they’re there and claim no prior knowledge. Hey, it worked for the Nazi, right?

He won’t do it, but Benedict needs to issue an immediate apology and reversal of his edict. But more importantly, people need to fucking snap out of this shit already and come to their senses and stop giving this man and this organization its power. It’s time to grow up and put your little invisible security blanket away and join the real world and do more than pray for once in your fucking life. This man is a poisonous asshole, and if you listen to him and believe that he should have any power or authority of any kind, if you support the same faith – remember, he’s the boss – then so are you. You can’t be half-Catholic. If you recognize the pope, you’re every bit as much of a hate-mongering tool as he is. That’s really all there is to it.

If Benedict is uninterested in helping humanity, then he needs to STFU and go back to his insular little world and write more sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic tracts until he’s dead. But for real just desserts I’d like to see him contract a rousing case of AIDS himself and live to see himself waste away little by little until there’s nothing left of him but his hatred and his bones and his yellow, scaly skin. Maybe then he’d find out what it would be like to be on the other side of his fuckery for once in his miserable, selfish life.

Hey, a girl can dream, cant she? After all — it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

I’m TIRED of this shit. It’s a new fucking day. These people need to shut the fuck up, get on board, or get out of the way. No more.

My response begins below:

Commentary: Bush will be vindicated – CNN.com

Clearly, your definitions of “safe” are wildly different from the accepted definitions of the word. As a nation, we are many things because of George W. Bush – almost none of them good – but “safe” is not one of them and never has been.

To even try to compare Clinton’s “moral failings” to the egregious offenses Bush and his administration have committed against this country and the American people is simply more of the same partisan blind rhetoric that the GOP perpetuates, and you are yourself seemingly still blind to the fact that it got your party shellacked in this past election.

Clinton was nearly a decade ago, and yet the Evil Clinton Monster is the only thing you still have to throw in the faces of anyone who tells the truth about George W. Bush. You can’t come up with anything different because there is simply nothing tangible, no reasonable, factual argument you can make in Bush’s defense, and so you fall back on old reliable – only nobody believed it then, and nobody’s believing it now, either.

Aren’t you aware of how this kind of thing makes you look when you do it? Dont you understand that the only way we will ever be functional and whole again is for us to come together and that youve GOT TO drop this nonsense and grow up and act like rational human beings so that we can repair the damage that George W. Bush and his cronies have done to this country? How can you be so selfish, so self-centered, so determinedly pigheaded, so flatly unwilling to accept the truth and work to better this country instead of perpetuating the downward spiral?

The failings of George W. Bush are multitudinous and while you may deny them, the facts are still there and unchanged in spite of you. Commentaries like this one make their authors sound like they’re both on drugs and functionally insane. This commentary is factually and ideologically wrong so often and on so many levels that I’d have to refute it on a line-by-line basis to counter them all with the actual facts that are in reality vastly different from the statements you have manufactured here.

George W. Bush did not keep America safe. He has made America more unsafe and gained us more enemies, perpetuated more terrorism and given birth to more terrorists the world over in the past eight years than we have ever had to deal with in our entire history as a nation. That is only one of his many, many failures, and they are all failures on an extraordinarily deep and profound level.

There are very few victories that Bush can claim that actually benefited the country as a whole. To state otherwise and pretend that you have an actual case to make with regards to a positive legacy for this man’s presidency, to try to claim that he was anything even approaching a good leader, a decent man, a “decider,” someone with compassion and who cared about this country, is merely sticking to typical party-line garbage.

The facts are staring us all in the face, and not just us – the world. Nobody believes you anymore, unless they are in the extreme minority of utter fools in this country who think that Bush did a good job. These same people also strongly support Sarah Palin. If that doesnt flat-out terrify you, then you do not have the mental capacity to either hold public office or to vote, to be honest.

George W. Bush has never done a good job of anything except making his corporate buddies more money. He has done this to the detriment of the entire rest of the world. The current economic situation in this country is a DIRECT RESULT of his policies and administration. The astronomical growth of terrorism worldwide is a direct result of his dramatically failed foreign policies. New Orleans is still a ruined shell of a city because of this man, years after the devastation. I could go on and on and on.

Your defense of his record is pathetic and borderline psychotic. You should be ashamed of yourself for vomiting forth such a commentary, and so should everyone who believes as you do or who refuses to see the truth about this man and his administration.

Civility? Dont make me laugh. This is a man who has said time and time again that he doesnt care about what people say or think; that the Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper. His vice president, Dick Cheney, told Senator Patrick Leahy to go f*** himself while they were conversing on the Senate floor regarding the highly questionable and at the very least very unethical sole-source Halliburton contracts in Iraq. This, on the SAME DAY that th Senate passed the Defense of Decency Act.

Cheney shot a man in the face while under the influence of alcohol at a hunting outing and totally got away with it. The Bush administration has repeatedly stated that it is above and beyond the laws of this country.

Civility? Are you kidding me? Methinks you obtained the definition for that word from the same place you got your definition of the word safe.

What is the matter with you? What is the matter with the people who agree with you, who think the same way you do? What is WRONG with you? What is it going to take, how far do we have to fall, what level of devastation do we have to reach before you open your eyes and finally admit the truth?

I speak for many people when I state that the end of the Bush adminstration is one of the best things ever to happen to this country. Barack Obama is not made of gold. He is human and fallible like the rest of us. He has a tremendous burden that is about to be laid upon him, and I hope with all my heart that he has enough time and enough cooperation to at least stop our freefall and set this country back on its feet again.

I have no and never have had any illusions that President Obama will be able to keep every promise he made. Neither does he. Nobody should. But at least Barack Obama cares about what happens to this country and every person in it, and that is more than could have EVER been said about George W. Bush.

George W. Bush couldn’t care less about America or the American people. Never did, never will. Anyone who believes differently is either a fool or an oil company executive. It is because of his administration and his policies that we find ourselves today barely a half-step above a third-world country, and when you visit some areas of the United States, even if it’s not New Orleans, the first thought that comes to your mind is that some so-called third-world countries have it pretty sweet in comparison.

George W. Bush has not made this country safer and has not kept us safe. The best thing about the Obama presidency at this point in time is the fact that it’s finally, at long last, the end of the Bush presidency.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. And you, Ms. Wall, need to either wake up, open your eyes, and screw your head on straight or follow him and leave the rest of us alone as we try to repair the damage and hope that it’s not too late to do so.

Enough is enough.

************************************************

Tara Wall’s original commentary begins:

Editor’s note: Tara Wall is deputy editor for The Washington Times. Before joining the newspaper, she was a senior adviser for the Republican National Committee and was named a public affairs director in the Department of Health and Human Services by President Bush. Read her columns here.
Tara Wall says President Bush will be remembered for keeping America safe.

Tara Wall says President Bush will be remembered for keeping America safe.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — In his final radio address as president-elect on the Sunday ahead of his inauguration, Barack Obama said President Bush “extended the hand of cooperation” to him throughout this period of transition. It was a final act of civility, on Mr. Bush’s part.

It is a trait that is not surprising to those who know Bush (or those paying some attention at least half of the time). At least one Democrat has given him credit for it. Unfortunately, that tone of civility has been lost on the Democratic leadership over the past eight years.

Civility aside, how others — more importantly, history — will judge the 43rd president of the United States, is the question that has followed Bush out the door. Lucky for him, it won’t just be up to Democrats to determine.

“I believe President Bush will be vindicated,” said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in an interview a couple of weeks ago. She may be an ardent defender of Bush, but I believe she’s right. She, like I, have a different vantage point than what has been routinely portrayed.

While sitting in the Oval Office with the 43rd president, for what was his last official week in office last Thursday, I got the sense that he feels he will be vindicated, too.

He won’t say as much, directly, but indirectly points to what matters most in his eyes — protecting the homeland. “History will eventually see … that not only was it necessary to take the steps I took, but [they] led to a better world,” the president told me.
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On a personal level (and for the sake of full disclosure), I must say that I have had the pleasure of working for and knowing Bush from his first campaign for president and throughout his presidency.

I started as a volunteer in 1999, then worked as a spokeswoman during his second campaign and then as an appointee in his administration.

Not only have I counted it an honor and a privilege to serve the 43rd president, but I have always had a deep respect for him as a person of faith, his strident conviction in doing what was right for the country and his commitment to closing the disparities that exist between black and white Americans — no matter the mistakes made and lessons learned. Above all, it is his dignity and civility that stand out to me most.

Yet, for many conservatives (not just liberals), Bush has failed on many fronts. From the miscalculation of the insurgency in Iraq, to failed intelligence gathering and the issues of maintaining fiscal conservatism and delivering real immigration reform — I can’t tell you how many Republicans and conservatives I’ve spoken to over this past year who have told me how “disappointed” they’ve been with Bush. A few among them voted for “change” as a result.

The legacy Bush leaves behind won’t be everything he wanted (particularly as it relates to popularity), but on many fronts, it will be better than that of his predecessor. Bill Clinton may have been popular, but his moral failings brought shame on the office of the presidency and tainted the people’s house.

That will forever be a stain on Clinton’s legacy. Not to mention, there was no such “civility” or “cooperation” when Clinton turned the keys over to Bush. I prefer principle over popularity any day.

On the moral front, President Bush delivered. On the social front, he delivered. On the fiscal front he failed considerably. Yet, on the national security front and on many domestic policies, he succeeded.

Depending on your vantage point, success may mean something wholly different. The details will be debated for decades to come. Among the many uncertainties, one thing is certain — you can’t judge history in the midst of it. Declaring one “the worst” president while he’s still in office is an effort in rhetorical futility. Historians know this all too well.

The best prediction one can make was summed up by presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin on “Meet the Press” last year: “If Iraq became the model democracy or even just a democracy, and in doing so changed the whole complexion of the Middle East, then obviously that would be the legacy that would justify what Bush did and what our troops did.” And that’s exactly what Mr. Bush is banking on.

During my Oval Office interview with the president, I asked him to complete the sentence “President Bush was… [fill in the blank].”

He responded (uncharacteristically in third person): “President Bush was the president at a time when our nation was attacked, he clearly saw the dangers, he pursued the enemy, he put tools in place so the professionals could better protect the people, and the homeland was not attacked.”

That is the legacy he wants. Popular or not, he kept America safe. And if nothing else, for that, he will be vindicated.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Tara Wall.

Commentary: Bush will be vindicated – CNN.com

Some folks continue to cry “BUZZKILL!” and “KILLJOY!” when they are reminded of what this day really represents. I dont care. What this day really represents is lies, thievery, rape, enslavement, and, finally, the widespread genocide of the peoples who called this country home for centuries before we ever got here. To this day they are outcasts on their own land, suffering more than any other people have suffered on this soil. This is the meaning of this day.

The settlers who came to Plymouth plotted against them on this day all those many years ago, to get the Indians out of their way so they could have the bounty of this land for themselves. They took all the Indians had to offer – gifts and hospitality without which they never would have survived – and in return for this kindness and generosity they butchered the Indians, men, women, and children, and enslaved the ones they did not slaughter. The Indians were rounded up and forcibly removed from the lands they had inhabited for generation upon generation and corralled into tiny areas which we, the usurpers, generously told them they could have as long as we didnt change our minds about wanting it. This land was often land that nobody else wanted or could use; useless for agriculture, often without water and with very poor hunting.

Today is the National Day of Mourning for the native peoples of this land, and while I hope that those of you who will be gathering with your family enjoy your day, I entreat you to spare a thought to the real meaning of this day. As you say your grace of thanks over your tables, remind those who are gathered of the people who have nothing to be thankful for, and at whose expense this day comes, and has come for nearly half a thousand years. They paid for your food and your football games and your gatherings and special shopping deals with their lands, their families, their blood, and their lives.

They still walk among us, these people. And they watch us on this day, and on Columbus Day, and they know that they will never be understood by the majority of people who grow impatient and frustrated and hostile when confronted by reminders such as these. I have chosen to stand with them and risk the annoyance of my fellow citizens, because I cannot do otherwise and still live with myself. I cannot partake of the celebratory meal without the stories and the history reverberating through my mind, causing the bile to rise and the food to stick in my throat.

Give thanks for what you have, and give thanks too that you have never had to pay for anything in your life the way they have had to pay for everything in your life.

So, happy Thanksgiving, folks. Enjoy your meals, your gatherings, and your holiday – and it is yours alone. It’s certainly not theirs, and it’s not mine, either.

Text of Wampsutta’s 1970 speech:

“I speak to you as a man — a Wampanoag Man. I am a proud man, proud of my ancestry, my accomplishments won by a strict parental direction (“You must succeed – your face is a different color in this small Cape Cod community!”). I am a product of poverty and discrimination from these two social and economic diseases. I, and my brothers and sisters, have painfully overcome, and to some extent we have earned the respect of our community. We are Indians first – but we are termed “good citizens.” Sometimes we are arrogant but only because society has pressured us to be so.

“It is with mixed emotion that I stand here to share my thoughts. This is a time of celebration for you – celebrating an anniversary of a beginning for the white man in America. A time of looking back, of reflection. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People.

“Even before the Pilgrims landed it was common practice for explorers to capture Indians, take them to Europe and sell them as slaves for 220 shillings apiece. The Pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of Cape Cod for four days before they had robbed the graves of my ancestors and stolen their corn and beans. Mourt’s Relation describes a searching party of sixteen men. Mourt goes on to say that this party took as much of the Indians’ winter provisions as they were able to carry.

“Massasoit, the great Sachem of the Wampanoag, knew these facts, yet he and his People welcomed and befriended the settlers of the Plymouth Plantation. Perhaps he did this because his Tribe had been depleted by an epidemic. Or his knowledge of the harsh oncoming winter was the reason for his peaceful acceptance of these acts. This action by Massasoit was perhaps our biggest mistake. We, the Wampanoag, welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people.

What happened in those short 50 years? What has happened in the last 300 years? History gives us facts and there were atrocities; there were broken promises – and most of these centered around land ownership. Among ourselves we understood that there were boundaries, but never before had we had to deal with fences and stone walls. But the white man had a need to prove his worth by the amount of land that he owned. Only ten years later, when the Puritans came, they treated the Wampanoag with even less kindness in converting the souls of the so-called “savages.” Although the Puritans were harsh to members of their own society, the Indian was pressed between stone slabs and hanged as quickly as any other “witch.”

“And so down through the years there is record after record of Indian lands taken and, in token, reservations set up for him upon which to live. The Indian, having been stripped of his power, could only stand by and watch while the white man took his land and used it for his personal gain. This the Indian could not understand; for to him, land was survival, to farm, to hunt, to be enjoyed. It was not to be abused. We see incident after incident, where the white man sought to tame the “savage” and convert him to the Christian ways of life. The early Pilgrim settlers led the Indian to believe that if he did not behave, they would dig up the ground and unleash the great epidemic again.

“The white man used the Indian’s nautical skills and abilities. They let him be only a seaman — but never a captain. Time and time again, in the white man’s society, we Indians have been termed “low man on the totem pole.”

“Has the Wampanoag really disappeared? There is still an aura of mystery. We know there was an epidemic that took many Indian lives – some Wampanoags moved west and joined the Cherokee and Cheyenne. They were forced to move. Some even went north to Canada! Many Wampanoag put aside their Indian heritage and accepted the white man’s way for their own survival. There are some Wampanoag who do not wish it known they are Indian for social or economic reasons.

“What happened to those Wampanoags who chose to remain and live among the early settlers? What kind of existence did they live as “civilized” people? True, living was not as complex as life today, but they dealt with the confusion and the change. Honesty, trust, concern, pride, and politics wove themselves in and out of their [the Wampanoags'] daily living. Hence, he was termed crafty, cunning, rapacious, and dirty.

“History wants us to believe that the Indian was a savage, illiterate, uncivilized animal. A history that was written by an organized, disciplined people, to expose us as an unorganized and undisciplined entity. Two distinctly different cultures met. One thought they must control life; the other believed life was to be enjoyed, because nature decreed it. Let us remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the white man. The Indian feels pain, gets hurt, and becomes defensive, has dreams, bears tragedy and failure, suffers from loneliness, needs to cry as well as laugh. He, too, is often misunderstood.

“The white man in the presence of the Indian is still mystified by his uncanny ability to make him feel uncomfortable. This may be the image the white man has created of the Indian; his “savageness” has boomeranged and isn’t a mystery; it is fear; fear of the Indian’s temperament!

“High on a hill, overlooking the famed Plymouth Rock, stands the statue of our great Sachem, Massasoit. Massasoit has stood there many years in silence. We the descendants of this great Sachem have been a silent people. The necessity of making a living in this materialistic society of the white man caused us to be silent. Today, I and many of my people are choosing to face the truth. We ARE Indians!

“Although time has drained our culture, and our language is almost extinct, we the Wampanoags still walk the lands of Massachusetts. We may be fragmented, we may be confused. Many years have passed since we have been a people together. Our lands were invaded. We fought as hard to keep our land as you the whites did to take our land away from us. We were conquered, we became the American prisoners of war in many cases, and wards of the United States Government, until only recently.

“Our spirit refuses to die. Yesterday we walked the woodland paths and sandy trails. Today we must walk the macadam highways and roads. We are uniting We’re standing not in our wigwams but in your concrete tent. We stand tall and proud, and before too many moons pass we’ll right the wrongs we have allowed to happen to us.

“We forfeited our country. Our lands have fallen into the hands of the aggressor. We have allowed the white man to keep us on our knees. What has happened cannot be changed, but today we must work towards a more humane America, a more Indian America, where men and nature once again are important; where the Indian values of honor, truth, and brotherhood prevail.

“You the white man are celebrating an anniversary. We the Wampanoags will help you celebrate in the concept of a beginning. It was the beginning of a new life for the Pilgrims. Now, 350 years later it is a beginning of a new determination for the original American: the American Indian.

“There are some factors concerning the Wampanoags and other Indians across this vast nation. We now have 350 years of experience living amongst the white man. We can now speak his language. We can now think as a white man thinks. We can now compete with him for the top jobs. We’re being heard; we are now being listened to. The important point is that along with these necessities of everyday living, we still have the spirit, we still have the unique culture, we still have the will and, most important of all, the determination to remain as Indians. We are determined, and our presence here this evening is living testimony that this is only the beginning of the American Indian, particularly the Wampanoag, to regain the position in this country that is rightfully ours.”

http://www.nativevillage.org/Inspiration-/Thanksgiving%20The%20National%20Day%20of%20Mourning.htm

In fact, both campaigns balked at just about everything. They want to control the entire debate and leave nothing up to anyone else. They approach debate organizers with a list of rules and state that those are the rules theyre going to follow, and then the organizers have to argue with them that that’s not how debates work.

This is not news to me; it shouldn’t be news to anyone who follows politics and isnt hopelessly naive. The question is, though, one that has repeatedly struck me and many others: Why is this acceptable? Why is it so acceptable to us that we have candidates that will not talk about the real issues, refuse to answer questions on issues that really matter? Why is negative campaigning permitted? Why are outright lies permitted – not just at rallies but in television ads and printed propaganda?

Why are we content to allow these candidates to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to lie and slander their opponents while kids are using ratty 25-year-old textbooks in ramshackle classrooms that are really just little more than broken-down trailers in parking lots, when so many high school graduates can barely read or write, when there are millions of hungry and homeless people – and hundreds of thousands more soon-to-be-needlessly-homeless people wandering around about one-half step from suicide, when almost a third of this country has no health insurance, when there are so many things that those utterly wasted millions can do to help people?

My guy is Barack Obama. I think that he’ll make a good president. I have my fantasies that he’ll be a great president, but at this rate I’ll settle for just good. If we get an un-filibusterable Democratic majority in the House and Senate, we’ll have a real chance to do something good to counteract the last eight years of appalling. He’s done shit I dont agree with – what the fuck was he thinking with FISA, I dont know – but he’s not a hate-mongering asshole, and that’s more than you can say for the McCain / Palin crowd. I sent him a few bucks a few months ago – the first time I’ve donated to a presidential campaign in many years.

But should he or anyone else be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on this campaign? Fucking NO. This should be against the law. If nobody in this country was hurting or hungry, if we had no better use for the money, then sure, do what you want. If everyone in this country was taken care of, then what the hell? You can’t take it with you, right? But the idea of all this money being spent – flowing like a river – and the banks collapsing all around us, nobody can go to the fucking doctor, student aid being slashed, shelters and social services disappearing left and right, how anyone can stomach this is beyond my capacity for understanding.

And the thought that these same candidates – the people who want to run this country in the name of every last one of us – want to be able to get the job without answering questions? No. This is unacceptable, and I do not understand why more people are not livid with rage over this fucking bullshit now. I just dont understand it, and I never will.

Our political system is completely broken. It’s out of control, and we’ve taken to accepting corrupt businessmen and criminals as our leaders because nobody else can raise enough money to challenge them.

And people laugh at me when I tell them that this is the beginning of the decline of the American empire. Heh.

A Marine was recently discharged from the service for tossing a puppy over a cliff while someone videotaped him. That little nugget ended up on YouTube. You could hear the puppy yelping as he went over. The Marine was laughing, even as his fellow Marines chastised him for doing it. I’m sure he’s not laughing now, but I can assure you he’s not crying as hard as I want him to be.

I want to know what in the fuck is wrong with people who will do this. It’s bad enough that these creatures never did a fucking thing to you. These are babies. They are utterly defenseless. They offer no threat of any kind, no resistance, they are literally no match for you. What the fuck is wrong with you? What the fuck are you thinking?

I tell you what. These people are fucking lucky as shit that I’m not a superhero. They’re lucky, but I think I might have a goddamn stroke.

Edit: And while I normally take the side of non-humans over humans, to be fair, I wanted to include this gem I discovered this morning while wrapping up a hearing I was working on: a 27-year-old man stomped a one or two-year-old toddler to death by the side of a highway in California on Saturday night. Several passers-by pulled over and tried to stop this man, and the cops had a chopper in the area, swung by, saw what this man was doing, and landed in the field next to the road. The officer was on the ground for less than two minutes, they say, before he made the decision to shoot this man because nothing would stop him from stomping this toddler to death.

They shot and killed him, but it was too late for the baby. Witnesses say that before the police got there, the man declared the child had “demons” in him, and though they tried, they couldn’t even pull him off the boy. Nothing would stop him from punching and stomping the kid to death by the side of the road. The police think they know who he is, but the beating caused so much damage they say it’s impossible to get a visual ID. Apparently, there was blood all over the cab of the pickup truck as well as all over the man himself and on the highway. I guess he sure did get those demons. More than he bargained for, maybe. Either way, not enough of them.

Brilliant.

The Bush administration has no problem with torture, so what they should do is strap loyal toady Kevin James into a chopper, hook him up to an amp, and fly him over Afghanistan as an aural warfare device to torment the populace into finally giving up bin Laden. I bet it’d take less than a day before his voice began to drill smoking holes into their brains, even if they didnt listen to a word he said.

I can’t believe this guy actually does a radio show. I thought there were laws against noise pollution in this country.

“What did Neville Chamberlain Do?”

Turn down your volume. Seriously.