Members of a swank club look with amusement and disdain on on of the 99-percenter protests in Wall Street … while sipping champagne.

I'm sure one or more of them made "the peasants are revolting" jokes.

The men and women looking with disdain and indifference on the protesters deserve to be the face of the indifferent hyperwealthy in America today. If any of you ever read The Great Gatsby, you know that Tom Buchanan and the rest of the "Swells" in the book would feel right at home on that balcony, literally AND figuratively looking down on the underclass upon which they guiltlessly stand, thinking somehow they got up there on their own.

From the YouTube text:

Irony is what happens when a true-blue, 'Merican prezidet from Gee-darned TEXAS spens eight years looking for Osama bin Laden and faile … but two and a half years into his Presidency, a crypto-Muslim Socialist who wasn't even born here does.

Thought was cribbed from a LTTE in a recent "The Oregonian". Wish I'd of thought of it though.

 
What really got me, reading all of these, is that Tea Partiers have been willing participants in the marketing of Atlas Shat, wearing those "Who Is John Galt?" T-shirts and all.

And then it really "got" me … John Galt would sooner take a shit on these people than do anything for them. But still they idolize him, because they've been convinced that they are Just Like Him. They see themselves as Taggart and Reardon, but they're really the assholes that Taggart and Reardon and Galt left behind.

Of course the proceeding statement asks you to believe that Rand had a point other than the one that ugly proto-Supercuts hairdo covered, but only for the sake of argument. The real point is that the average-Tea-Partying-Joe is so devoid of critical thinking skills they shouldn't be trusted … well, with anything really.

And, now more than ever, praise of Ayn Rand should be taken as a manifest and potentially fatal character flaw. An Objectivist is someone who thinks that Western man, if only he were unfettered, wouldn't be an asshole anymore … and just to be safe, will become a bigger asshole than ever just to make sure you don't test them.

If an Objectivist promised me something, I'd get in in writing and notarized … and I still wouldn't trust 'em.

"I was wrong. I'm sorry."

Any other attempt to explain away this marks this "apology" as insincere. There is no explanation. There is no excuse. There is no defense. Poor people lose thier livelihoods over infelicities like this. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for a Republican.

How can you survive 74 years on Earth, in America, without grokking the fact that putting a man's face on a chimp - when that man has an African heritage and ancestry - is racist? It doesn't matter what you MEANT or what you UNDERSTOOD.

Just ask yourself this: when is the last time you saw any Republican "photoshop" (sorry, Adobe) a chimpanzee's face on a caucasian?

If you "didn't understand" that this is racist, you're stupid. If you can believe that and keep a straight face, you're a Republican.

Why, again, do we have to share this country with these people?

Tonight on the Malloy show, Mike gave the listeners a scare by imitating an old man who was asked to sub at the last moment.

It had me for a few seconds because I tuned in in medias res as it were.

Mike, as expected, gave nothing away about La Rhodes; indeed it's incredibly possible that Mike has little or no information other than the knowledge that Randi's show is off Nova M.

But I think there's a tell in the way Mike said he was on the "I Don't Know What Its Name Is" Radio Network.

Mike has always been a big advocate for NovaM (and I've always like it because they make it possible for me to listen to Malloy and other things that AAR just feels it's too good for), but I just can't shake the thought that Mike's trying to tell us something, and maybe that something is that NovaM's got bigger problems than they just can't keep Randi on.

But being the quintessential media outsider, I realize that just about everything in radio is as it looks but not as it seems.

Thoughts, anyone?

The absence of La Rhodes from the airwaves has been abrupt and every drab of information only raises more questions than each answers.

The letter from Anita Drobny to listeners on the NovaM website has been posted far and wide. There have been other developments since, and the place to find out about them has been the blog on the website of San Francisco's Green960 AM (formerly known as The Quake, KQKE).

Not long after the NovaM announcment, Green960's PD, John Scott, made a posting including this verbiage:



Today, John Scott posted a message ostensibly from Randi, which reads, in part:



Read all about it here. And it looks like, for now, if you want to keep abreast of what's happening with La Rhodes, John Scott's blog on Green960 looks like the place to watch.

There was recently a bond sale here in Oregon ... and The Smartest Republican* in Oregon, Ben Westlund, our State Treasurer, proved what happens when you hold a bond auction, and everyone came:



On behalf of everyone who isn't rich enough to even think of buying a bond ... thank you. You've restored some of my faith in my fellow Oregonian.

Well done, fellows. Well done.

* Ben Westlund is the smartest Republican in Oregon because he evolved upward ... to become a Democrat.

Enjoy!

Sad news, friends: "Radical" Russ, Sunday AM habitue of the KPOJ schedule, feircely-intelligent and witty but still just a NORML guy, someone who made the liberal talk radio landscape a little more interesting, has been cancelled:



I wasn't necessarily on board with the cannabis stuff, but I liked his unafraid approach to the issues.

Aloha, Russ.

This week in Portland, we had the <i>don Quixote</i> that is Lars Larson tilt at the windmill that is Sam Adams:



And here's someone who was apparently protesting the Columbia River Crossing at Metro Council:



Seriously, I don't get that. Are they protesting people who wear tape on thier mouths? Mongrams?

Happy monday, everyone. Cheers!

Via OPB:



Well, it's gotta be pretty flattering if you're enough of a positive figure and percieved as an honest broker that you're names' going to come up in the national press for an opening even if you aren't being considered for it.

I don't know about anyone else here but I take a jaundiced view of when a Republican goes after a Democrat, even if they might have a point.

In my posting on my blog here:

http://realoregonreality.blogspot.com/2009...

I note that that old anti-worker, anti-union warhorse, Bob Tiernan, is going after Peter Courtney, the closest thing Oregon ever had to someone like Tip O'Neill.

Not only is Mr T whining out an ethics complaint on Peter, but he's imploring to get the Lege to look as deep as it can, obviously, until it digs up a petard that they can hang Peter on.

The background is that a big spending bill benefitted Western Oregon State University. Peter works there, so Mr T is crying "conflict of interest!". It may be true that Peter may have been a little sloppy about it, but I doubt that there was any ethics breach.

The reason Mr T is going after Peter is because this will distract Peter Courtney (and, he hopes, the Oregon State Senate) from doing the people's business. And that's all Bob Tiernan really cares about.

What is a Frank Sinatra Republican?

It's the same as a Cell Phone Beefstick.

It's the same as Mary Kay Cosmetics getting the Atom Bomb.

it's yet another symbol from a party that's as addicted to glib meaningless symbology as a tweaker is to crystal.

It says nothing and means less.

Hey, I long for the days of the smoke-filled lounge-lined Strip and the smooth Rat Pack in slender black suits and skinny black ties, but as a political metaphor it's like writing the Constitution in Crayola.

And that's a metaphor you can believe in!

Remember ol' Wes Cooley? How he had exactly one term as US Rep from the dryside 2nd District (now home to Greg "only Statewide Republican Left" Walden)?

Remember why?

Because he lied about serving in a Special Forces unit in Korea and once the Sergeant who was his DI called him on it, accused him of being Alzheimer's afflicted?

Actually, Wes was part of a Very Special Forces unit. He went to the battlefield on a short yellow bus.

Remember how he and his wife collected her Vet's widow benefit until someone found out and then they adjusted thier wedding date accordingly, because if you're married it's a felony to collect survivor's beneifits?

And how he lied about being a motorcycle-riding champion?

You didn't see that fellah leave town ... because he slunk out in the dead of night, and decamped to southern Cali.

Well, that dude just can't quite lying. I was just as surprised as anyone when he showed up, indicted, in a business fraud scheme.

From The Oregonian:
>

Cooley, 76, who represented eastern Oregon in the U.S. House for one term in the 1990s, was indicted Thursday in Los Angeles on federal money laundering and tax charges. Prosecutors said the charges stemmed from an alleged scheme that bilked more than $10 million from investors.

A product of Southern California, he lived outside Bend in 1994 when he got himself elected to Congress. Two years later he was forced to drop his bid for re-election amid allegations he'd lied about his military service. In state voter pamphlets he had falsely claimed to have fought in Korea.

Actually, Cooley had a long and colorful history of lying about a lot of things. I discovered this when the newspaper sent me to Orange County to interview his former business associates, friends and family members.

For example, he once claimed, under oath, to hold a law degree and a master's degree. Not true.

He bragged at parties of having connections with a shadowy secret agency that "could make things happen to people," and he liked to boast that he used to kill people with piano wire.

But a background check showed the Cooley was never a spy or assassin. He was a blow-hard.

Here's My take on it.

Hello everyone!

I'm new to DU posting (though I've read it for literally years) and have finally gotten up the courage to open a poliblog of my own.

It's here:

Real Oregon Reality–http://realoregonreality.blogspot.com

As you can see, it's getting harder to find good names for stuff.

And, certainly you might think that the last thing we need is one more smartass poliblogger. But living in Oregon, where the rare air of the Republican is particularly comical and somewhat intoxicating, So it's easy to want to crank off about it.

I think I have a unique wit and am willing to mock Republicans out loud.

Come join me and spread the word. There's a new cowboy in town.