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Julius Civitatus's Journal
As you should know by now, the Bush administration came to the rescue of the financial industry with a $1 TRILLION (no typo, with a "T") federal bailout:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/19/... Before you can even get your head around that astronomical number, here´s what the federal bailout means to you:
So beware, while the economy won't implode right now, things will get tighter and tougher in the years to come, and the downward spiral will continue, only at a slower pace. Things will be particularly bad for middle class working families, as they'll carry the burden of this debt. PS (on edit): REMEMBER ALL THIS THE NEXT TIME THEY TELL YOU WHY AMERICA CAN'T HAVE NATIONAL HEALTH PLAN. Apparently, providing heath care for all Americans is a waste of money, that rewards bad behavior for people that don´t earn it or contribute to society. Next time a Republican tells you their half-assed reasons why it´s ok for a (dwindling) superpower not to have national health care, or better schools, or proper scholarships, etc... well, remind them we just gave away $1 TRILLION bucks of our hard earned dollars to lazy, incompetent and greedy honchos that ran our financial system to the ground.  There is no money to rebuild NOLA after Katrina, or properly equip FEMA, or rebuilt the WTC site in New York, or provide proper shielding for our soldiers in Iraq, or assist 30 million uninsured Americans, etc. But there's always money to make sure Wall Street executives can keep paying their country club fees. Remember that. PS 2: Also, remember this mess the next time a Republican utters the word DEREGULATION. This mess is a direct consequence of the deregulation efforts started during the Reagan years. Since then, Republicans have waved the flag of deregulation and tax-cutting, making it the center of their political philosophy. Apparently everyone thought it was a great idea to let entire industries "police themselves". Yeah right! Now we are seeing the consequences of boundless greed mixed with deregulation. That word should, from now on, become a slur. On the day that Bush will call for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, this little movie seems the more appropriate. It's quite a reminder, in the form of satire, of the way the Bush administration would like to treat a certain portion of the population (Democrats, gays, non-believers, etc).
Check out the hilarious teaser for the indie "BIRDSHOT MOUNTAIN": http://www.birdshotmountain.com Follow the adventures of two righteous fundamentalist cowboys, Adam and Steve, as they carry their fanatic crusade to the West Village in NY, only to discover a certain "affection" for each other along the way. Don't miss the stellar appearance of a certain VP as he daydreams of applying his brand of "compassionate conservatism" to the passionate cowboys. It's a parody of "Brokeback Mountain," mixed with political satire. Enjoy! PS: It's a little bit "low-brow", but funny nonetheless. http://www.birdshotmountain.com  The "conservatarian" nerds at National Review never miss an opportunity to embarrass themselves in ways that defy logic.
Lacking real conservative rock stars (other than the embarrassing Ted Nugent and Alice Cooper), the NRO gang decided to forcibly appropriate some of the greatest rock songs in history and claim they are "really" conservative anthems. Of course, even the casual viewer would take notice that the vast majority of the songs that the Republicons are trying to hijack were composed by extremely liberal artists. Many of these artists would fit into what they contemptibly dismiss as "dirty hippies." Also, these songs were written in a context of struggle of liberal ideas against a conservative establishment (ahem, "the sixties" that the "conservatarians" seem to hate so much). True to form, the New York Times, instead of laughing at this preposterous idea by Republicans to usurp rock classics as "conservative anthems," published the entire list and gave props to the National Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/arts/mus... You can get an idea of the ridiculousness of this proposition by checking the top 10 alone: 1. "Won't Get Fooled Again," by The Who. 2. "Taxman," by The Beatles. 3. "Sympathy for the Devil," by The Rolling Stones 4. "Sweet Home Alabama," by Lynyrd Skynyrd 5. "Wouldn't It Be Nice," by The Beach Boys 6. "Gloria," by U2 7. "Revolution," by The Beatles 8. "Bodies," by The Sex Pistols. 9. "Don't Tread on Me," by Metallica 10. "20th Century Man," by The Kinks The only one I would possibly, by a stretch of the imagination describe as a "conservative anthem" would be "Sweet Home Alabama." And still, I doubt it is. Yes, they include the Sex Pistols. Yes, the same ones of "Anarchy in the UK." Read the article, because your brain will do somersaults at the twisted logic and rational stretches the NRO nerds made to justify their selections. I kid you not: they called the revolting, scatological lyrics of "Bodies," by The Sex Pistols a family-values "anti-abortion anthem." Unreal. To add to the hilarity of this lists, they added Bob Dylan, The Clash (yes, THE CLASH as CONSERVATIVE ROCKERS!!!!!), Creedence Clearwater Revival, and many others. Just to give you the coup de grace on this charade, they end up the piece by listing "Stand By Your Man," by Tammy Wynette as the number 50 of their list of "conservative ROCK anthems." Truly surreal, to say the least. I guess the NRO geeks got bored of making excuses for the Iraq war, and decided to focus on some other interests. PS: AOL, of course, is making a poll about this list. They love this shit. You can vote if you consider these songs "conservative" at the bottom of this page: http://news.aol.com/entertainment/music/da... PS: the funny thing is that Ted Nugent or Alice Cooper are nowhere to be found in this list  Well, this guy just doesn't get it.
After his nasty column last week, in which he trashed Colbert and called him an "unfunny bully," Cohen received a lot of emails complaining about it. He calls it "hatred." Today, he dedicates his waste of a column to denigrate all the "hatred that is threatening America from the Democratic party." Seriously, the guy is out to lunch. Check it out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte... Digital Lynch Mob (...) Then I wrote about Stephen Colbert and his unfunny performance at the White House correspondents' dinner. Kapow! Within a day, I got more than 2,000 e-mails. A day later, I got 1,000 more. By the fourth day, the number had reached 3,499 (...) When I guilelessly clicked on the name, I would get a bucket of raw, untreated and disease-laden verbal sewage right in the face. (...) But because I held such a view, my attentive critics were convinced I had a political agenda. I was -- as was most of the press, I found out -- George W. Bush's lap dog. If this is the case, Bush had better check his lap. It seemed that most of my correspondents had been egged on to write me by various blogs. In response, they smartly assembled into a digital lynch mob and went roaring after me. If I did not like Colbert, I must like Bush. If I write for The Post, I must be a mainstream media warmonger. If I was over a certain age -- which I am -- I am simply out of it, wherever "it" may be. All in all, I was -- I am, and I guess I remain -- the worthy object of ignorant, false and downright idiotic vituperation. What to make of all this? First, it's not about Colbert. His show has an audience of about 1 million -- not exactly "American Idol" numbers. Second, it marks the end of a silly pretense about interactive media: We give you our e-mail addresses and then, in theory, we have this nice chat. (...) But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated. The hatred is back. I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during antiwar demonstrations. I can appreciate some of it. Institution after institution failed America -- the presidency, Congress and the press. They all endorsed a war to rid Iraq of what it did not have. Now, though, that gullibility is being matched by war critics who are so hyped on their own sanctimony that they will obliterate distinctions, punishing their friends for apostasy and, by so doing, aiding their enemies. If that's going to be the case, then Iraq is a war its critics will lose twice -- once because they couldn't stop it and once more at the polls. cohenr@washpost.com Democrats angry. Democrats scary. It was the Democrats and the peace movement that "prolonged the Vietnam war and elected Nixon." And Democrats and peace activists, because we are "angry" at been ignored, censored by the media, screwed over, and basically excluded from the political process, we will be responsible for not stopping the Iraq war. Whaaaa? Cohen, you are an IDIOT. You are way too deep in the D.C. beltway game to anything beyond it. Just retire and let a real liberal write your column. Where has this guy been for the last 5 years? Oh, yeah! On Chimpy's lap. Of course. Richard Cohen (WP) calls Colbert "rude," "not funny," "lame," "insulting," "bully."
We have already established that Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is a WANKER. He is not just a wanker, but one of a major order. Cohen is the self-described "liberal" columnist at the notoriously neocon-friendly WaPo. Funny thing, is that this self-described "liberal" always finds ways to agree with the Bush administration, always supports the decisions of the Bush administration, and has never wasted time attacking and chiding his "fellow liberals" for one reason or another. In essence, Richard Cohen is what Eric Alterman calls a "New Republic Democrat," or a liberal in name only that can only be equated to the likes of Joe Lieberman in his predictable brown-nosing of the Bush administration. In today's column, Cohen spews venom against Stephen Colbert. It surprised me how nasty and personal Cohen gets in his column. Still, what surprised me the most is how Cohen called Colbert a "bully": But in this country, anyone can insult the president of the United States. Colbert just did it, and he will not suffer any consequence at all. He knew that going in. He also knew that Bush would have to sit there and pretend to laugh at Colbert's lame and insulting jokes. Bush himself plays off his reputation as a dunce and his penchant for mangling English. Self-mockery can be funny. Mockery that is insulting is not. The sort of stuff that would get you punched in a bar can be said on a dais with impunity. This is why Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully. See how it works? According to Cohen, a comedian with a biting sense of sarcasm is a “bully,” but not Bush. Not siree! Bush is not a bully that deserves at least some comical criticism to his face, for once. Colbert is the bully in Cohen’s servile mind. Bush apparently is not, the same guy who started a preemptive war based on lies, that attacked and persecuted critics by using dirty tricks (Plame), that used the power of the presidency to leak the identity of a CIA agent for personal revenge reasons (Plame again), who has silenced critics, who has cowed media and opposition into subservient devotion “or else,” the same guy who has decided he’s above the law and violated 750 laws just because, who has authorized human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Grahib, well, that guy is not a “bully.” That guy is just a poor victim of that horrible, not-funny, rude, lame, insulting comedian Stephen Colbert. Somehow I am not surprised this tool has come out so quickly to attack Colbert. Richard Cohen was there when it was time to rush the country into invading Iraq. Cohen devotedly chided and criticized antiwar protestors. Cohen bashed Michael Moore when the right went on a crusade against Fahrenheit 9/11. Cohen is as predictable in his lapdog devotion to Bush and his cronies as Ol’ Faithful. Cohen gets even better in this paragraph: I am not a member of the White House Correspondents' Association, and I have not attended its dinner in years (I watched this year's on C-SPAN). The gala is an essentially harmless event that requires the presence of one man, the president. If presidents started not to show up, the organization would have to transform itself into a burial association. But presidents come and suffer through a ritual that most of them find mildly painful, not to mention boring. Whatever the case, they are guests. They don't have to be there -- and if I were Bush, next year I would not. Spring is a marvelous time to be at Camp David. Oh the horror! Oh the horror and the ignominy that Dear Leader had to endure a bit of sarcastic jokes and criticism! What are we gonna tell the children? How did that “unfunny” Colbert guy dare pierce that bubble of isolation that surrounds Bush at all times? How dare he??? If Richard Cohen has demonstrated anything over the years is that he is a Washington courtier, a servile tool of the DC Republican establishment, always ready to join the latest Republican cause célčbre and side with his outrage in the conservative melee. If anything is “not funny,” it is Richard Cohen still pretending to represent “the left” in the Washington Post. Now that’s an insulting joke. PS: he posts his email in the article cohenr@washpost.com |
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