Random Barking

This year, John F. Kennedy would be 92, if he had lived.

Robert F Kennedy would be 85, if he had lived.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been 81, if he had lived.

Thousands of Americans killed in various wars would also be alive, if they had lived -- not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and millions of Southeast Asians; and plenty of Russians, Afghans, Pakistanis, Israelis, Palestinians, and several thousand people in the World Trade Center towers, hundreds of suicide-bomb sites around the world, and other forms of 'collateral damage' that have followed on the malicious leadership of major actors on the world stage.

However, I'm only a Dog; and no one listens to me.

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Rudderless, And Zombies In The Crew

In Our Current Crisis, the hopey-changey Democratic leadership ran to assist the Banksters. Because politicians never like to make Big Money unhappy, even if the Banksters were caught red-handed in the functional equivalent of selling Blow by the metric ton, while having sex with twelve-year-old cheerleaders.

As a result, nothing has been done to address the nation's teensy unemployment issue. And for their part, the Rethugs are happy to do everything possible to obstruct the Obama administration -- their theory being that if they can make everything worse, and then blame it all on the awful evil secret Muslim Kenyan scary Negro leader...

Well (as 'Babs' Bush says,) it will work out "very well for them (chuckle)". And then the 'Real Americans' can "Take Back The Country". As if all this is all about a yacht-racing trophy or Superbowl championship, or something. You know how the Right be lovin' them sports metaphors.

Barron's online reports today:

The official unemployment rate held steady at 9.6%, but the so-called underemployment rate, which includes labor-force dropouts and part-timers who would rather have a full-time job, surged to 17.1% from 16.7%. John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics ... further adjusts the underemployment rate to count folks who have been out of the labor force a year, who don’t get counted among “discouraged workers” by the government. By his tally, true underemployment hit 22.5% in September, up from 22% in August, and a new high...

The country feels becalmed. Our elected leadership appears hesitant, gobsmacked, unable to comprehend the damage done by the Banksters, much less know what to do.

And wherever you turn, there are crew members, or passengers -- President Boner, or President Sessions; or a Pat Robertson or a Glenn Beck, or a Newt Gingrich or Rand Paul -- who suggest the Ship Of State would sail so much better if we cut down some of those cumbersome, pesky masts, and open the petcocks in the holds to allow seawater in.

This would lower operating costs for the Ship, and provided needed ballast (because the Ship Of State's been a little, uh, uppity since that New Captain With Such A Tan took the helm). After all, they say, it's what the original shipwrights who built Her intended. And people like Little Newt and Michelle Bachmann and Little Billy Kristol are never, ever wrong. Little Rupert Murdoch tells us so.

In today's New York Times Op-Ed Columnist section, Bob Herbert made the opening observation (and quoted by The Great Curmudgeon) that

We can go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and threaten to blow Iran off the face of the planet. We can conduct a nonstop campaign of drone and helicopter attacks in Pakistan and run a network of secret prisons around the world. We are the mightiest nation mankind has ever seen.

But we can’t seem to build a railroad tunnel to carry commuters between New Jersey and New York.

The United States is not just losing its capacity to do great things. It’s losing its soul. It’s speeding down an increasingly rubble-strewn path to a region where being second rate is good enough.

It's Okay If You're A Republican, though. And if you're part of the Ruling Classes © -- as long as events don't interrupt your lifestyle, you don't give a fuck what happens to a bunch of peasants.

And you don't give a good goddamn what happens to the United States; if the roads are bumpy or the lights flicker, you can call and complain: How dare those persons interrupt our lives! Don't they know who we are??

And if that doesn't magically make the roads smooth and the power dependable, you can just take an extended vacation at your property at Cap Nez, or in Passy, or Kensington Square or the Grünwald; and after a wonderful meal prepared by your cook, with friends who live as you do, you can think about having sex with the maid and the pool boy.

Just so you all get it: People like that are who we're all working for. They own us; we're here for their convenience -- or, so they believe...

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Across The Universe -- Freda People

John Lennon, 1940-1980



Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither while they pass; they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind,
Possessing and caressing me
Jai guru de va om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
That call me on and on across the universe;
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box
They tumble blindly as they make their way,
Across the universe
Jai guru de va om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

Sounds of laughter shades of earth are ringing
Through my open views; inviting and inciting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me
Like a million suns; it calls me on and on
Across the universe
Jai guru de va om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

Across The Universe (Lennon / McCartney, 1969)

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We don't care what flag you're waving,
We don't even want to know your name,
We don't care where you're from or where you're going,
All we know is that you came;

You're making all our decisions,
We have just one request of you,
That while you're thinking things over,
Here's something you just better do:

Free the people, now,
Do it do it do it do it do it now.
Free the people, now,
Do it do it do it do it do it now.

Well we were caught with our hands in the air,
Don't despair paranoia is everywhere,
We can shake it with love when we're scared,
So let's shout it aloud like a prayer:

Free the people, now,
Do it do it do it do it do it now.
Free the people now,
Do it do it do it do it do it now

We understand your paranoia,
But we don't want to play your game;
You think you're cool and know what you are doing,
666 is your name;
So while your jerking off each other,
You better bear this thought in mind:
Your time is up you better know it,
But maybe you don't read the signs

Free the people now,
Do it do it do it do it do it now.
Free the people now,
Do it do it do it do it do it now.

Well you were caught with your hands in the kill,
And you still got to swallow your pill,
As you slip and you slide down the hill,
On the blood of the people you killed

Stop the killing now,
Do it do it do it do it do it now.
Stop the killing now,
Do it do it do it do it do it now.
Free the people now,
Do it do it do it do it do it now...

Bring On The Lucie (Freda People) (John Lennon, 1973)

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Happy Birthday, John. You're missed.

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Random Barking At No Moon

Stress, on occasion, won't allow you to sleep, or to go back to Dreamland™ if you happen to wake up.

So, here I am, having been up since 2:00AM; I have an abusive neighbor who lives above me -- a semi-shut-in-by-choice with a quick temper who has had me wearing earplugs in order to sleep for the past five years -- and tonight, he isn't home. The first time in forever I could have slept normally, and I can't. Classic. And people wonder why I think The Universe has it in for me.

Anyway, I was reading this post by an artist whose work I enjoy looking at, and had this early A.M.'s Deep Random Barking Thought: I'm an artist, and a writer, and would probably be better off if I spend way more time doing that.

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All Mongo All The Time

Wherein Our Mongo Claims Primacy,
And -- Hey!! Other Dog!!


Steal My Persona And Go To Doggy Hell, Buddy

Looking around the Intertubes a bit, I found a reference that was both curious and disturbing -- not that everything on the 'tubes doesn't strike me as disturbing in some fashion.

Apparently, The South Magazine, a Regional print and online magazine celebrating that part of the country that gave us [Redacted], [Redacted], [Redacted] and [Redacted] a [Redacted], apparently has a mascot -- the owner's dog, an English Bull Terrier, named Mongo.


Not Me: Someone Else's Mascot, 2009

I've been blogging since 2008, and have been a Dog so much longer than that. The name 'Mongo' (aber natürlich) comes from the mid-seventies film, Blazing Saddles, and was won by me after a night of drunken, smoky collegiate revelry that resulted in, uh, "an incident". I was known to a small cadre of fellow-travelers as Mongo, A Dog, ever since.

I just want it made clear: That Mongo is not me; I am not them. I am, much like Brian, The Other Dog, a Free Dog, not anyone's property, able to make a living, and waste your time with stuff like this.

By the way: Ted Both, Author Guy, wrote a book entitled Mongo: Adventures In Trash in 2004, and noted that



According to Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, the word mongo was coined in New York in the 1980s. It refers to trash, or more specifically, to treasure found in trash: books, artifacts, furniture, even food. Ted Botha’s book explores a whole culture, and various subcultures, that revolve around mongo.

We work; We bark; We blog. We put our noses into women's crotches; they appear to enjoy it.

Just so we're clear.

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Midterm 2010

(Cartoons: © Mr. Fish, Harper's Magazine Online, 2008, 2010)

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Thank You, Lil' Boots. Again. And Again. And Again. And Again.

Worst. United States. President. In. Our. History.

The New York Times online reports that warnings have surfaced, leaked from sources in the American intelligence community, of planned assaults against Western European capitals by Al-Qaeda terrorist teams.

Some of the potential attackers may already be in Europe... [and reports indicate] the Haqqani network in Pakistan as involved in the plot. The network is allied with the Taliban and has been a target of some recent drone attacks in Pakistan.

Another French official speculated that the leak of Washington’s concerns about attacks in Europe from Pakistani Al Qaeda and the Taliban was also meant to justify the increasing drone attacks on targets inside Pakistan, to press Pakistan to use ground troops more aggressively in the tribal areas and even to prepare the ground for using American ground forces, covert or otherwise, inside Pakistan.

However, that's not the money quote:

Many in Washington believe that the answer to stability in Afghanistan lies in a more aggressive offensive against Al Qaeda and Taliban militants sheltering in Pakistan.

Many in Washington? And whom the fuck does the NYT refer to? Where were these Many, when U.S. Forces in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan in 2002 were pulled back from going after Bin Laden et Cie -- knowing where they were -- and not being allowed to complete their mission?


Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo in Middle
Of Blog Rant (Today's Animal: The Rock Hyrax)

Where were these policy sageheads when President Cheney and his crack team of incompetents made sure Lil' Boots got his war in Iraq, the easy target (Hey; it's full of WMD's; "Greeted As Liberators"); what could happen?

Where were these "Many" that now say we should be more aggressive in Afghanistan -- when for almost a decade they supported Lil' Boots' official line: To ignore it as if it weren't happening la la la la; I can't hear you..., thereby allowing a Bush family friend Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to regroup, and Osama as the 'spiritual leader' to continue pushing a fantastically warped, megalomaniac vision of re-establishing an Islamic Caliphate.



So, hey -- thanks, Lil' Boots! Running America was just like all the other business ventures you got involved in -- oil business; sports team management; Governor of Texas; husband and father -- each, a complete failure. Except, running America turned out to be an EPIC FAIL. The only real difference is the scale; and now, you have actual blood on your hands: At least a quarter-million people, probably more.

And, there are people walking around in London, Berlin, and Paris right now who may not be walking around any longer, in the near future. They should thank you in advance for your far-sighted, wise counsel and sage leadership-- they'll all want to say Thanks In Advance! for what may happen.

Don't worry your little hereditary-rich head over it. We'll clean up your mess while you take it easy; that's 'god's way', to you. Because you've toiled, and are as well a pathetic piece of human waste regarded, you are living proof of god's having given up on us in disgust and now fucks with us, an immoderate and malicious countenance, shining upon you as one of the Elect.

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Dog

Generic Mongo, Suitable For All Occasions

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End Of The World As We Know It

Pat Boone, 76 (oh, for god's sake; Look Him Up), has founded the Beverly Hills chapter of the Tea Party.

Boone, who emceed, called the event "not a Republican or a Democrat thing. This is a citizen thing." He ... added a little musical flavor, singing a song he said he wrote specifically for the event. In the lyrics, Boone refers to himself as "a rootin', tootin', flag-waving citizen" and says: "But I pray for our enemies, the Bible says I should. 'Cause if they mess with Uncle Sam they'll disappear for good."

Um, Pat? I thought Uncle Sam was bad. Tea Party says so. Gov'nment is bad socialist evil bad. Takes all our Freedom, or something.

A bunch of exceptionally rich people, demanding that government allow them to enrich themselves virtually without limit? That it adopt immigration policies to ensure they have a steady supply of pool boys and housecleaners, who just aren't seen or heard otherwise?

Tea Party (Teee Par-tee); noun; perjorative: Redneck yahoos, organized into a political party by millionaire and billionaire Wingnuts to ensure that their way of life continues unabated and unfettered, while allowing the yahoos to believe that they "have the power", and are "taking back the country". Similar to the Tea Party scene in "Alice In Wonderland", and with just as much connection to reality.

Alternatively, it's also a method of certain interests exerting influence over what they perceive as a conservative populist movement which, in its worst form, could exhibit itself as religious fascism. Important, then, to make sure their way of life is undisturbed, no matter who's in power.

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Little Annie: Time's Almost Up

Little Annie Coulter, Bearer Of Light And Reason

Ann Coulter has been engaged (by her own count, in 2005) at least three times over the past twenty or so years (not counting the stalking by the sort of obsessives who like an 'Ilse, She-Wolf Of The SS' type of woman. In each case, the Manchild she bonded with was able to recognize that, after mating, Coulter would paralyze them and lay her eggs in their still-living flesh. They left; so sad, but predictable.

She's been a buzzing, insectile noise on the American cultural scene for almost twenty years. Her shtick is predictable, too: Show up, wherever they'll have her; then, say something so offensive that even her hosts are taken aback; and thereby guaranteeing some buzzing and chittering in the media about that terrible person Ann Coulter... until the next time she does it. It's a merry-go-round of insult and excess that has made her a good deal of money.


Billy And Annie: Kamaraden Of The Rethug Reichskanzeleri

She frequently makes incendiary, insulting references about - well, anyone she wants to: Muslims, Liberals (whom she seriously believes should be tried for treason and executed (“Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy... liberals are always against America," she wrote), Gays; Blacks; and anyone else who strikes her fancy at the moment. She suggested that suicide bombers should detonate a truckload of explosives outside the New York Times offices.

In a string of books (most of them making best-seller lists only due to a standard tactic: Bulk purchases, by Right-wing organizations, who then have to sell them to secondhand bookstores as remaindered) and a continuing column -- like Lard Boy and Little Mikey Weiner do on radio -- Coulter vomits out an unending tirade of hatred and insult.

Apparently, she enjoys it. When confronted about what she's said, or written, Coulter claims that she was only being 'funny', that she is really the victim -- of not being "politically correct" -- and simply misunderstood.

However, she hasn't been too successful with her shtick lately. Unless the Lumpen Right do actually take over, her fifteen minutes may be up, because the country appears to have little time to notice Annie's antics, as they're more concerned about keeping their jobs, feeding their children, not having to live out of their cars; you know -- what's now the usual for most of us.

And even if the Teabaggers eventually do run the country into the ground -- a proud, rising, angry Tea Party nation doesn't want overly-intellectual, leggy blondes as poster girls and leaders. They want evangelical, can-do optimistic, faux-frontier types... like Little Sarah Palin, Plain 'n Tall: She wouldn't be caught dead in a roomful of Those Whom Sin Against Man And Nature.


A Proud, Rising Teabagger America Is Conway Twitty's America

Even so, last night at HomoCon, the convention for the gay conservatives, Coulter was one of the featured speakers (And, addressing a roomfull of "them" didn't sit well with other Rethugs). True to form, she stood up and told them (as reported by Megan Carpentier of TPM Media), ' "Marriage is not a civil right. You're not black." It was part of a larger argument on which she later elaborated, telling the crowd that the 14th Amendment only applies to African-Americans and that it does not, in fact, apply to women, LGBT people or other minorities."

(A curious note: One of Coulter's ex-fiancees, conservative talentless hack writer Dinesh D’Souza (author of "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11"), once penned at article in 1981 while at college, outing his campus' gay alliance leadership -- most of whom hadn't come out of the closet even to their families. Imagine the fun and hilarity that ensued from that. Currently, Little Dinesh debates famous Liberals and Agnostics about the existence of god, and god's morality, since Little Dinesh is a righteous xtian.)

Coulter also suggested that the conservative gay community should drop support of any equality-of-marriage issue, and join forces with those who oppose abortion, because "As soon as they find the gay gene, you know who's getting aborted."

(Coulter neglected to mention that it is conservative evangelical christians, and conservative Catholics, who are the primary opponents of abortion -- and who believe homosexuality is a sin [the Old Testament indicates is punishable by death] and that the lesbians and gays who were listening to Coulter are damned, living a lifestyle "against god and natural law", predators of children; and worse. I'm sure they'll jump at the opportunity to join forces with America's Taliban.)


Stoning Of A Woman In Afghanistan: What Extreme Views
And The Absolute Surety Of Belief Lead To, Every Time

...in addition to her comments about civil rights [Carpentier reported], she also accused single parents of breeding muggers and blamed the decline in marriage in the African-American community on welfare, "the subsidization of single parenting" and overly liberal child support laws. Coulter's comments about civil rights being "only for the blacks" rubbed many people the wrong way as well.

However, Coulter made an ironic joke about oppression, and the amount of money in the gay community -- compared to other minority communities. "Blacks must be looking at the gays saying, 'Why can't we be oppressed like that?'" Coulter quipped, and the comment "garnered plenty of laughs from the well-heeled crowd."


Why Couldn't They Be 'Oppressed Like That'? Possibly
For Reasons Annie Can't Fathom In Her Own Experience

Yeah... I bet people living in Bedford-Sty, the South Bronx; Detroit; Cleveland; Baltimore; Central L.A. and the Oakland Flats, would all get a chuckle, too, out of a humorous comparison between the experience of a bunch of predominantly white and rich people, with their experience of being Black in America.

To be discriminated against and made to feel shameful, because of who you are, hurts -- but African-Americans aren't in a Closet about who they are. It's not possible. And most of the people in the HomoCon crowd could have no concept of what discrimination because of the color of your skin feels like... which made Coulter's joke a bitter, self-serving, throwaway line.

In the comments section following Carpentier's TPM article, someone else noted (changes only made for proper usage and punctuationt) that they weren't sure they could expect any other sort of performance from Annie,

... but Ms. Coulter is no fool and she clerked for a Supreme Court Justice no less; she knows very well that the 14th Amendment applies not just to black Americans but to a whole host of other classes, including classifications of gender and alienage. It is true that the Supreme Court has not yet recognized homosexuals as a protected class for 14th Amendment purposes, but it is obscenely disingenuous for Ms. Coulter to assert the 14th amendment only protects black Americans. Equal protection means equal protection - the language of the Amendment itself has no qualifiers.

So -- Little Annie will have spent all this time being someone who is publicly (and, according to some who've commented to the media, privately) angry, insulting; done everything to live up to the persona of outrageousness she's created. She'll continue the same pattern: Making execrable comments, grabbing media attention in Left and Right Bolgistan, again, for a while; then, yet another book contract, followed by a speaking tour; and after a time, that will lead to yet more execrable comments...

That will go on for a few more years (she's still a fairly fit, if anorexic, fifty). I don't think she can compete with the Sarah Palins -- Coulter's not an evangelical; she's not working-class. She's not a Populist Wingnut -- she's worked to be one of the pampered, wingnut Elite, and I don't believe that's who is lining up to 'lead' the Teabaggers. Glenn Beck comes off as a The Really Smart Guy Next Door Who Hearts Jesus, and cries, and gets big ratings Market Share -- and that's what those manipulating the Rising New Right want.

Annie comes off as Too Smart -- the cool blonde in High School who would never even look at a full-of-the-lord (or something) Regular Guy. Annie doesn't have Regular Girl-next-door, Xtian-pinup appeal like Little Sarah... and she knows it. Coulter will always have some niche on the Right -- but the new mainstream being courted is vibrantly, decisively evangelical, fundamentalist, and intolerant in a way only True Believers can be.

As her influence in the Rightist community fades, Coulter will no longer be what she labored to become -- a "marketable commodity". She will age. Without the adrenaline high of notoriety, the constant reaffirmation that she is someone, what will she fall back on? Most people confuse their true selves with some adopted persona; people who have "made it" have agents, publicists, secretaries -- a whole structure to support the false notions celebrities create about themselves.

As a result, Coulter may not be able to relate to others outside that created self, or to establish relationships of any real intimacy -- and so gets to spend her declining years as a sad, older parody of someone who used to be famous for a while.

If I were Annie, and knew that "Obscenely Disingenuous" could be my epitaph, I'd work overtime to make sure that never came true.

But I'm only a Dog -- and, oddly, I seem to know better than Annie.

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UPDATE (10/9/10): Well, it's nice to be agreed with, even in part.

She calls herself "the right-wing Judy Garland", now.

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