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Rogan’s Rant

By Brian Filed in Links, Politics, Rants Tagged with , , May 27th, 2011 @ 11:23 am

I have never been a huge fan of Joe Rogan. He was funny as the geeky station engineer on the classic ’90s sitcom “NewsRadio”, but his persona gets on my nerves a bit. So I was surprised that I liked this longish video that takes some of his rants and sets them to a montage of video clips. The last minute or so of the video gets away from the topic of how we’ve been screwed over by the power elites and falls back on one of his pet subjects — 9/11 “truther” conspiracy theory — but it’s sort of incidental to the rest of the video.

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The Dirty Fucking Hippies Were Right

By Brian Filed in Misc, Rants Tagged with , , , March 19th, 2009 @ 12:56 pm

This video runs a little long and oversells the point a bit, but any of you who were actual DFH’s back in the day will undoubtedly appreciate the appreciation.

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No, I Won’t

By Brian Filed in Rants Tagged with , , , , July 8th, 2008 @ 3:10 pm

I have firmly made up my mind that I will not vote for Barack Obama in November. It was a foregone conclusion that I would not vote for John McCain, but I had a hard time working up much enthusiasm for Obama during the Democratic primaries and only begrudgingly came to the rationalization that I would vote for him anyway simply because he was the Democrat.

Now even the idea of voting for him just to vote against John McCain and the Republicans has lost any appeal for me. His effort to “run to the center” demonstrates that Barack Obama was already right-of-center and has decided that his political aspirations can only be achieved through total appeasement to the ultra-right fundamentalist Christian activists who have overwhelmed the Republican Party. His “refined” views on withdrawal from Iraq, telecom immunity in the FISA bill, wiretapping, continuation of the odious “Faith-Based Initiatives” program, expansion of the federal death penalty, the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment ruling, and even his sudden embrace of NAFTA place him so far outside the realm of “liberal” or “progressive” that he could just as easily be the nominee of the Republican Party, were it not so committed to its own twisted, theo-fascist platform.

The Obama people have spent a lot of time spreading spin that their guy hasn’t changed (no pun intended, I’m sure), that this is where he has stood all along. Now spin is spin, but if there is even a shred of truth in this, then either he is a complete hypocrite for his primary campaign rhetoric, or the rank and file of the Democratic Party are complete morons for not paying closer attention to what he was saying. Though I thought Bill Clinton ran a very poor campaign for his wife, it turns out that his political sensibility about Obama was correct after all: the Democratic Party, in its desperation, has allowed itself to be sold a bill of goods.

Further, as the polls show that he has overtaken McCain and has begun to cement that lead so early that some outlying pollsters have dared to whisper the word “landslide”, there doesn’t seem to even BE any need to “run to the center” to pull in those swing voters. That, I feel, is the telltale sign that these shifts are not electioneering tactics but represent what an Obama presidency will mean for this country. If John McCain symbolizes four more years of the same destructiveness of the Bush Administration, Obama is nothing but “Bush Lite”. Like the Spineless Duo of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, we should be prepared for a Democrat who bends over or caves in to the merest hint of displeasure from the far right. The high crimes and misdemeanors of Bush and his cronies will go unpunished. The unconstitutional usurpations of our rights will continue in the name of “homeland security”. Disastrous foreign policies that have hindered our interests abroad will be continued with only some cosmetic changes. And, worst of all, the efforts of the hard-core Christian activist crowd will continue to have a strong supporter in the White House.

And the motherfucker didn’t even wait until he was elected to stab us all in the back. Even George W. Bush pretended to be a decent guy up until 9/11.

If you are committed to voting Democratic in the November election, I urge you to consider this: I received an e-mail from Democrats.com recently suggesting that anyone who was planning to support Obama consider giving their campaign contribution to an escrow account they are setting up and letting the campaign know that they cannot have the money until he renounces his right-wing positions and returns the party to a progressive platform. I think this is a wise idea. Obama’s ability to fundraise at the grass-roots level has been enormously strong, and it would hit him where it hurts if that source dried up, particularly in light of his decision to not accept public campaign funding. It would also give him one more chance to demonstrate that he is willing to listen to the people of his own party rather than the loud-mouthed freaks of the far right. It is too late at this juncture for the Democratic Party to dump Obama and go with a better candidate, and so the only good move is to try to swing him back to progressive values and hope that he won’t sell us all out again after the election.

As for me, I will almost certainly write in the name of another candidate come November. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain deserve to be the next President of the United States as far as I am concerned. Each represents the failure of the two national parties and the failure of a political system left too long without meaningful changes. Though I agree with some of the positions of Ralph Nader, I do not support his choice to run yet again, nor could I ever support someone like Bob Barr. My vote will simply have to stand in opposition to the bad choices made by others so that those choices have one less voice of validation.

Links to accompany this post:

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2008/06/sellout.html

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/06/whos_who_in_meetings_with_obam.html

http://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/2008/06/barack-obama-an.html (via TPR)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25455916/

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/02/anti-telecom-immunity-protest-group-tops-obama-website/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/memo-to-obama-moving-to-t_b_110026.html

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3787/holding_barack_accountable/

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/fisa-compromise.ars

http://www.sixhoursaweek.com/2008/07/netroots-what-did-you-expect-f.html

http://www.theseminal.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/fisa2a.jpg

http://prorev.com/2008/07/swampoodle-report-making-muddle-of.html

http://www.kskirby.net/mccain.html

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Independence Day, 2008

By Brian Filed in Rants Tagged with , , July 4th, 2008 @ 12:00 pm

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That all men are created equal.

That they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;

and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism,

it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

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To Those Who Sacrifice

By Brian Filed in Misc, Rants Tagged with , May 26th, 2008 @ 8:08 pm

Today we honor those of you who have made a willing sacrifice in the name of freedom — you who have given up your golf games, you who have taken fewer weeks of vacation, you who have given all the expired cans of vegetables from your pantry closets. For every tattered, sun-bleached made-in-China flag that whips as you drive twenty miles over the speed limit in your gas-guzzling SUV. For every magnetic sticker slapped on the bumper of your low-mileage American-made station wagon. For every commemorative coin, combat-gear-wearing Beanie Baby, or “Never Forget” license plate frame. Because if that’s not sacrifice for the greater good, baby, I sure as hell don’t know what is.

Stay classy, USA.

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We Have Nothing To Lose But Our Chains

By Brian Filed in Links, Rants Tagged with , , May 1st, 2008 @ 2:04 pm

“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” — Thomas Jefferson

A Happy May Day, Comrades!

Now more than ever the lie of capitalism reveals itself in the crimes it commits against us all in the name of the Great God, Profit. In the name of profit, millions are deprived of food, reduced even to eating dirt. Meanwhile corporate executives take home bigger and bigger fortunes, even when they mismanage their corporations into ruin, taking thousands of American homeowners with them. Apologists and spin doctors who try to convince the world that insatiable corporate greed is beneficial (or at least benign) are beginning to run out of room for their prevarications and rationalizations. In this country and others, they have inculcated us in a cult of consumerism that has succeeded in turning us into placid, passive cattle who must constantly graze on new pastures to ensure the delusion of ever-increasing returns for investors. The result: a Second Gilded Age not unlike the conditions that existed in the United States at the turn of the 20th Century, with the concomitant results of decreasing life expectancy, reduced access to overpriced health care, and an erosion of the middle class that might yet prove irreversible.

Our government does nothing except abet and assist this. Trillions of dollars have been wasted on Iraq and Afghanistan to no effect and for no good reason other than to redirect that money into the pockets of corporations deeply tied to the President and Vice President. For every war crime George Bush and Dick Cheney should be tried for, there is another crime of fraud for which they also should receive swift and harsh justice.

May Day exists not to glorify the equally criminal Soviet system that hijacked Russia and Eastern Europe for generations, but to say to the world that the workers of the world, who are the bulk of humanity itself, deserve the recognition and implementation of their unalienable rights and redress for the inequalities that over-reward a tiny few at their terrible expense.

The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, who has worked to bring equality and democracy to his own country since his surprising electoral victory in 2005, offers a sort of “Ten Commandments” for a better world:

  1. Put an end to the capitalist system
  2. Renounce wars
  3. End imperialism and colonialism
  4. Protect the right to clean water
  5. Promote the development of clean energies
  6. Respect Mother Earth
  7. Treat basic human services as basic human rights
  8. Fight inequalities
  9. Promote diversity of cultures and economies
  10. Live well, don’t live better at the expense of others

(via)

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Freedom FROM Religion

By Brian Filed in Atheism/Religion, News, Rants Tagged with , , , December 7th, 2007 @ 4:09 pm

Such As?

“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.” — Mitt Romney, December 6, 2007

Fifteen percent of the population of the United States self-identifies as atheist or agnostic. That’s more than any religious affiliation except Roman Catholics and Baptists, and almost ten times as many people as there are members of Romney’s own Mormon church. And yet, in the process of justifying his own sectarian beliefs, even as he used the words “no religious test” as they apply to running for public office, he still managed to verbally invalidate the inalienable rights of millions of Americans by implying the existence of just such a test to discriminate between believers and non-believers. This Washington Post editorial this morning quite rightly chastises Romney for the implication, all too commonly repeated, that non-believers are somehow less deserving of essential liberty.

It is hypocritical to assert that HIS religious faith is irrelevant to his ability to serve as President while simultaneously asserting that those without religion are not welcome in the halls of government or in the land of freedom itself. Religious affiliation should indeed be utterly irrelevant to the qualifications of any individual to serve at any level of government. The foundations of American governance make no provision for religion whatsoever and in fact go out of their way to PREVENT religion from playing a role in the practical business of democracy. The separation of church and state exists to protect each from one another.

I can only echo the words and thoughts of this blogger as he says:

Although he addressed the speech to all Americans, he was not talking to me when he gave this speech. Romney made it perfectly clear that as President he would represent non-believers like me with reluctance at best. We do not fit into his idea of Americans; we are an after-thought.

If the two political parties in this country are headed towards the conclusion that, as an atheist, I am not a true American, then my family and I will, in effect, be sent into political exile. For me (as for the ancient Athenians, who also valued political partipation as a part of the core of a person’s identity), exile robs life of its meaning.

Romney, unwittingly or not, for reasons of political expediency or not, threatened me with political — and therefore, for a non-believer, spiritual — exile in his speech today.

How dare Mitt Romney and others like him stand before the entire nation and disqualify me and millions more like me on the basis of the very sort of intolerance that the founders of this nation sought to banish? His “I’m not one of THEM, I’m one of YOU” speech smacks of cowardice and craven appeasement. He should be ashamed to present himself as a qualified candidate for the country’s highest office if he cannot wholeheartedly represent the interests of ALL the people rather than those he seeks to side with out of political expedience. And the same holds true for each and every candidate of both parties, indeed each and every candidate for any public office in the United States.

In 1960, when John Fitzgerald Kennedy rose to address the issue of his own religious belief as it related to his ability to perform the duties of president, he said these words:

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end – where all men and all churches are treated as equal – where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice [my emphasis] – where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind – and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe – a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the Nation or imposed by the Nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment’s guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would, our system of checks and balances permit him to do so – and neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test – even by indirection – for it. If they disagree with that safeguard they should be out openly working to repeal it.

I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none – who can attend any ceremony, service, or dinner his office may appropriately require of him – and whose fulfillment of his Presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation.

This is the kind of America I believe in – and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we might have a “divided loyalty,” that we did “not believe in liberty” or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the “freedoms for which our forefathers died.”

To borrow from the late Lloyd Bentsen, you are no John Kennedy, Mr. Romney.

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ATM = Automated Theft Machine

By Brian Filed in Misc, Rants Tagged with , , , October 22nd, 2007 @ 12:28 pm

ATM Fees Going UP UP UP

Since Bank of America raised their non-customer ATM fee to $3/transaction in August, I have avoided using their ATMs like the plague; when I absolutely have no choice, I’ll use one, but then I take a larger amount of cash so as to minimize the need to go back for more later. I have no doubt that it will be simply impossible not to incur a fee for using any ATM anywhere, customer or not, in very short order.

There’s got to be some threshhold for ATM fees. Now that you generally can’t get anything under $20.00 in cash, you’re paying a 15% surcharge for a minimum transaction. Will the next step be $5.00? Can you even remotely justify a 20% surcharge just to get your own money?

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Have A Holly Jolly Christmas

By Brian Filed in Blogs, Rants Tagged with , August 13th, 2007 @ 11:04 am

Too Damn Early

Semi-famous blogger and Mutual Friend of Torrez Brittney Gilbert took this picture at a mall somewhere in the Nashville area this weekend.

I happened to see the exact same thing at a Yankee Candle store in a mall here in the Boston area on Saturday, along with a couple of other stores already decorated for Halloween. HALLOWEEN!!one!!eleven!

I’m sorry, August 11 is TOO FUCKING EARLY for Halloween decorations and merchandising. Plus, you do realize this means that the Christmas decorations will be going up in about a month, don’t you?

What can we do to counter this nonsense? I’m asking sincerely. The time has come where somebody has got to display a little common sense, and it’s obviously not going to be the retailers. How do we send the message to these people that they have gone completely off the tracks? Do we boycott? Do we write nasty letters? Do we post this stuff online and mercilessly mock them into taking it down? I am tired of just ranting about this; there has got to be a way to reinject some sense of perspective into this death spiral of endless hucksterism. Let’s figure it out and start doing something, please!

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Say CHEESE!

By Brian Filed in News, Rants Tagged with , , , , July 25th, 2007 @ 12:45 pm

terror%20cheese.jpg

Okay, now they’re just plain making shit up…the TSA is now claiming that terrorists are staging “dry runs” of airplane terror events based on finding totally random crap in the luggage of completely unrelated people. In one cited example, blocks of cheese are claimed to be “similar in size and shape to plastic explosives.”

Aw, c’mon, FOR FUCK’S SAKE! How much more of this total nonsense is going to go on?!?!?! They’ve stretched so far beyond the realm of credibility now that they might as well just disband the lot of them, cancel all air traffic, and send everybody home. For a moment last week, I thought maybe these guys were finally going to pull their heads out of their collective asses when the head of the TSA admitted that taking away cigarette lighters was “security theater”, but apparently not.

I would also like to spew a little venom at the Bush Administration, who very obviously leaked this story as part of their recent campaign to cry “Wolf!” as much as possible to distract people from their latest poll numbers and their Mexican standoff with Congress. First it was Chertoff’s “gut feeling”, then some other vague warnings about terrorists, and now this. What really steams me, though, is the way the national news media report these stories with the doe-eyed ingenuousness of a five-year-old who has just learned that babies GROW UNDER CABBAGES and feels the need to pass this along to every person he meets. I’m beginning to think that this French tax official isn’t the only one with a giant hole in his brain.

I never thought ‘d say something like this, but I, for one, was actually glad that the Lindsay Lohan story got more attention than this, because that’s about how much actual news value this shit has.

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