Whiskey Fire

Sign of Wasted Times

by Molly Ivors

2009 looms, less than two hours away. And I thought I'd take this opportunity to express my thanks and tell you my hopes for the future.

THANKS:

First, I'm thankful for Thers, the other half of my brain, who defines, more than anyone else, my day-to-day experience.

An actual conversation, more or less:

Me: Please consider paint colors for the kitchen renovation.
Thers: There is a difference between you and I
Me: What is that?
Thers: You like to do stuff. I do not.
Me: (laughs)
Thers: No, seriously You see a vacation, you say: project! You see a tax refund, you say: kitchen. I see a vacation, I say: sleep! I see a tax refund, I say: party!
Me: Well, I guess that's accurate.

Seriously, dood. You rock.

Thanks too to our cobloggers: Thers's jebby co-survivor VA; the wiseman/wiseass of the midwest Rip; the woman with the shit on the Left Coast, flory; and my lifelong friend and confrere Jake T. Snake (who, I confess at this juncture, is my cousin).

Thanks to the monsters of Liberal Mountain, only shards of whose adventures make it to your fine eyes.

HOPES:

I hope our new president, once he's in office, stops stroking people and starts kicking ass.

I hope our new president listens to Paul Krugman.

I hope our new president lives up to the things people swore to me about him.

I hope we can restore the economy and the climate at the same time.

What are you thankful for? What do you hope for? Have a wonderful New Year!

UPDATE FROM THERS.

BUGS!

I am also a "nerf-herder."

Gift Ideas

by flory

It's too late for this Christmas, but keep note of this for next year. The perfect gift for your nuttier Republican relatives.

With any luck they'll be needing some serious cheering up in another year.

The Wingnut Faucet. I shit you not.                                         

Take My Tears & That's Not Nearly All

by va

Languishing at the butt-end of this fairly repulsive year, it seems only fitting that the hottest word in our political discourse is "taint." The year started its winding-down with this:

and is wrapping up with a Republican making an unfunny taint joke in the New York Times:

The Blagojevich scandal, ladies and gentlemen: a grand conspiracy running from the top all the way to the very, very bottom to talk about assholes as frequently and gratuitously as possible. They must think we're all deeply stupid.

And who's to say we're not!! Case in point: The Times warns us today of the dangers of walking on New Year's Eve. It's very dangerous! Tara Parker-Pope says, "It’s a little known fact that Jan. 1 is the deadliest day of the year for pedestrians." I did not know! I mean, motility is a fairly basic feature of humanity; how badly could it go awry? Sure, it's possible to walk poorly, wasting motion and energy, not utilizing the ideal posture, not paying attention to oncoming traffic, disregarding "THIN ICE" signs, sleepily wandering over the edge of a cliff only to look down and disappear with a dust-puff, forgetfully carrying armed grenades, dynamite with lit fuses, swinging chainsaws... Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Maybe Pascal was right about just sitting quietly in one's room?

It depends. Just how dangerous is walking, anyway? Tara Parker-Pope again:

Twenty-fucking four! Gadzooks! Why, if Alberto Gonzalez goes toddling around tonight, he could lecture us about how nearly he became a statistic! Ah, well. If you're looking for me tonight, I'll be the guy stumbling out of a bar in lower Manhattan, parading around, probably naked, reeking of booze and gasoline with a drink in one hand and a flame thrower in the other, laughing at 2009 as it timidly takes hold over the land and kicking it in the shins.

Good for You, Asshole!

I completely approve of Blagojevich's decision to go ahead and name a new senator. Sure, he's being an asshole, but there's a certain "joie de fuck you" quality to the announcement that you just have to admire. This is a man who owns his asshole-ness. "Yeah, I have this stupid haircut, and you think I'm I'm going to jail, but here's your motherfucking Senator, and if you don't like it, bite me, suckers!" It's the kind of attitude you see in, say, your more self-aware bass players, and at least from a distance it's almost endearing.

Patriot Games

I don't write very often about Israel/Palestine, because it's not really an area of my expertise (though I certainly know more about it than, say, Marty Peretz or Noah Pollak, in that I'm not demented), and because no other topic quite brings out the Internet crazy. Like, say, Marty Peretz, between whom and Pam Gellar there's not a tit's worth of insane difference here.

However. One need not carry any brief for Hamas without it being clear that the current Israeli government, and likely subsequent Israeli governments, don't want "peace" so much as an interminable extension of the status quo: "don't fuck with us" as policy, in other words. In which case we can expect nothing to change more or less forever, with the sort of wildly disproportionate response to a non-existential threat we're currently witnessing. (Someone else may wish to defend a military action that has, what, 65 civilian corpses on the one side -- the vastly weaker side -- and, what, six? on the other, as "proportionate," but I don't go in for this sort of math, personally, as it involves a moral algebra I have no interest in mastering.)

I don't see how Israel's interests are being particularly well served in the long run with this sort of an approach. But then, I'm American, not Israeli, so for me the more pressing question is whether or not American interests are being particularly well served in supporting current Israeli policy so generously with our tax dollars. And the answer to that question would seem to be "no." If this is what Israel wants to do, fine. But they can pay for it themselves. But I don't have to pay for it, I don't want to pay for it, and I dislike paying for it. It's a waste of dollars. The money the US spends on military aid to Israel could be better spent in countless ways than on a government that insists, invariably, on exacerbating international problems.

UPDATE. I seem to agree with NTodd, which gives me pause as to the veracity of my thesis...

Super Sunny Christmas

Recovering from holiday travels/travails/treks, what passes for normal bogging ought to resume shortly.

It was a fun trip! My favorite part was this morning when we were getting ready to go, and the 9-Year-Old, who is in a Gifted Program, disappeared into Grampa's bathroom to perform, presumably, bathroom-program-related activities.

He was in there for quite a while, long enough so that his father became... irritated. You see, the need had developed within his father to occupy that particular area himself, and, moreover, the 9-Year-Old had failed to pack, despite his father's Repeated Instructions to the contrary. (It is important by the way at this point to remind you that the 9-Year-Old is in a Gifted Program.) "I'm washing my hands!" yelled the 9-Year-Old, somewhat frantically, over the sounds of water gushing from the tap.

After much Knocking and Warnings of Imminent Bodily Harm, the 9-Year-Old (a student in good standing in a Gifted Program, you will recall) emerged from the bathroom, and informed his father that he might enter the bathroom. As his father did.

Pretty much every towel that Grampa possesses was strewn on the bathroom floor. In addition, there were soap suds about 8 inches high on every possible surface, from the toilet bowl lid to the top of the sink to the bathtub rim.

Upon inquiry, the boy informed his father that he "couldn't figure out how to turn off the taps, so the sink overflowed, and the hand soap bottle went underwater and got all foamy." Asked why he did not, you know, ask for help, he said, and I quote, "I just thought I'd put down a few towels."

So his father cleaned up the bathroom, which was really alarmingly sudsy, got the boy to toss the towels in the hamper, and finally began to use the bathroom himself... and at the damndest moment you could imagine, from the living room came a scream of Primal Terror!

The 9-Year-Old, instead of packing, had tried to put on a videotape, and had screwed it up, somehow managing to tip over the entire TV stand as well as the TV, and was desperately holding up the entire apparatus with all his scrawny might before it crushed him to death.

I saved him, yeah, but not before reflecting that his predicament was pretty damn funny, for several reasons. First, getting smooshed by a television would be kind of an ironic commentary upon contemporary American cultural mores. Second, it was the most hilarious thing I've ever seen in my life, a skinny little kid being attacked by a giant TV. And third, this was the second completely ridiculous predicament he'd created for himself in the space of half an hour, and, like I said, he's in a Gifted Program.

You Know Who We Really Hate?

-By Jake T. Snake

I have had a ringside seat to the economic downturn this year. It is not an abstraction to me. The folks at the bottom are always the first to feel the pinch, when it comes. Clients of the agency I work at come through our doors every day requesting assistance with basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter and medications. As the year has progressed and New York State has chosen to repeatedly victimize its most vulnerable citizens, it has become more difficult to help people meet these needs. I have visited food banks with empty shelves, been told clients were ineligible for help when I knew they were and had to challenge these decisions. I have sat with clients while their applications for public assistance were reviewed by fraud investigators at social services. Our local social services department actually hired fraud investigators at the same time that it was laying off child protective workers demonstrating conclusively where our values lie and how genuinely mean spirited we are as a people. At the federal level Social Security routinely denies people eligible for benefits in the hopes that they will not reapply. Many people who receive benefits must hire a lawyer before social security will concede that they are indeed eligible. As the resources have become more limited, the level of scrutiny and inhumanity has risen accordingly.

I have, of course read about the rising unemployment numbers and the ensuing uptick in applicants for public assistance and food stamps nationwide like everyone else. It seems the chickens of Bill Clinton's (Best moderate Republican president ever)welfare reform are finally coming home to roost. We always knew that the flaw of his plan was an economy without jobs and here we are. The reform has no provision for an unemployment rate like we are experiencing now. Once again, our policy in practice serves to punish most harshly children and the elderly. Perhaps, it is time to repeal the child labor laws and begin allowing them to work 12 hour days again.

For nearly 30 years we have done our best to dismantle the safety net for the poor and struggling among us. I keep praying that we have reached the end of this folly. At 42, these policies are what I have known my entire work life. I dream about social service programs and rules that would treat people like human beings, rather than as an undesirable applicant to be culled out. I want so badly for us as a nation to stop punishing people for being poor, or elderly or a child of poor people. This holiday season was hellish as I watched scores of our clients navigate the realities of a holiday with nothing but further grinding poverty. Some days I am just weary from the strain of witnessing the suffering that goes on around me. It takes a toll that is more than physical, it eats away at the soul to see people ask for so little and receive far less.

As I contemplate how to pry a few dollars from these systems designed to humiliate and degrade my clients, already struggling with being social outcasts, chronic illness, drug addiction and mental illness I sigh audibly. I read of billion dollar bailouts and disappearing pallettes of cash as I ponder how to help a family with $400.00 so they will not be homeless in three days. I am so very tired.

Legacies

by flory

Ezra is looking for some help identifying the reasons behind the Iraq invasion -- not the post hoc rationalizations floating around today, but some identifiable reaons why the Bush Administration decided to take this country to war in Iraq as a response to 9/11.

Although he doesn't say it in so many words, I suspect the basic problem here is that Ezra is looking for some kind of rational, geopolitical basis for Bunnypant's signature fuckup  - and there simply isn't one. There really was no single reason or coherent set of reasons why this nation had to invade a fifth rate military power that posed no threat to our national interests. Rather there was a perfect storm of obsessions, hidden agendas and garden variety self-interest that intersected in Baghdad:

Halliburton and oil. Dick Cheney might be a late nite punchline, but he's also been the single most powerful vice president evah -- and he ran Haliburton. The Bush family made a lot of money in the oil bidness. Controlling access to the world's second biggest proven oil reserves really wasn't incidental to the decision.

Military/Industrial/Intelligence complex. It's hard to overstate how badly the wind down of the Cold War hurt the profits of the defense industry, and the Afghanistan war was never envisioned as big enough to reverse the trend. Iraq always showed the promise of justifying a massive build-up of military hardware and privatized support services.

Family history. Bush has daddy issues and daddy failed in Iraq. It might be trite, but that doesn't make it any less true.

PNAC. Let's face it, if the founders of PNAC -- and influential policy wonks for the Bush Administration -- had been named O'Malley and Chin and Juarez, the defense establishment would probably have kept their eyes on Afghanistan and Pakistan after 9/11. Instead they were named Kristol and Kagan and Wolfowitz and had some pre-existing obsessions when it came to defense priorities.

The intellectual vacuum at the center. Bush is an easily manipulated boob who thinks he's an intellectual (witness this howler). There's nobody on the planet easier to play than that guy.

The hardest part in identifying the rationale behind Iraq is accepting that the 'most powerful nation in history' could have been suckered so badly.

Night After Xmas

'Tis the Season of Christmas, and all 'cross the 'nets
Wingnuts are whining of how they're oppressed.
Tripe has been tossed out at Townhall with care,
Pretending it's "uncool" to say you like prayer.
Chuck Norris believes that Jesus got jacked,
Or perhaps neutered -- but at least somehow off-whacked.
"All-powerful atheists have just gone too far!"
Cries that illiterate Elf, jolly Mary Grabar.

I've long been tit-bored with this class of crap,
And had resolved to ignore it with an X-mas nightcap,
When what to my dyspeptic eyes should appear,
But K-Lo claiming it's worse to be Christian than queer!
Obama wants Warren! He's thus not a "divider"!
Bring in the bigots! Become a "uniter"!
More rapid than eagles, K-Lo's canards they come --
"Those most hurt by Prop-8 are the Mormons.
They of course have the clear right to deny rights to the gay,
tight magic underpants make that OK."

As I drew up my hand, to upraise my mid-finger,
K-Lo let loose the the worst whine of the winger:
 "If you're opposed to gay marriage you're labeled 'intolerant,'
But what's more depraved than a gent loving a gent?
The MSM lies if they say that the reason this skeeves us
Has fuck-all to do with our devotion to Jesus;
We dislike it for reasons of hygiene and children!
Who must NOT be raised by those men who like men!
I can't quite explain why, though most devoutly I hope,
You know the real victim here is that poor man, The Pope.
Any gender bending old Benny considers a piss-up,
Which is why the Church will never ordain a gay bishop.

" Fuck this, I thought, and went back to my work,
And wrote down this pome about how K-Lo's a jerk.
Her line of bullshit can make you depressed,
But in the long run perhaps we shouldn't be stressed:
It's Christmas and you know it's not we
Who want to impose upon others the meaning of fam'ly.
We don't defend torture, or excuse bigotry,
We can just chill out, or not, in front of the tree.
And so let me say, as I drive out of sight,
Merry Christmas to all, and to all, Dyn-o-Mite.

(X-posted at FDL, where, I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here yet or not, I now do Thursday nights)

Ballad of Jacking Jesus

Christmas Eve: the 4-Year-Old will not sleep. She is determined to see Santa. Santa is downstairs listening grimly to the scuffling upstairs that indicates Child Espionage. Santa can do nothing but wait this out, and so to kill time, wonders what Jesus' favorite stick of kickboxing gristle is most recently bothering us with. Hi Chuck!

'Tis the season to be Jesus stealing? Away in a manger, no Christ for the bed? It has become a new Christmas fetish -- neutering Nativity scenes by jacking Jesus.

Dear Lord. Seems like Chuck has discovered alliteration, and is taking to it with the exact same enthusiasm toddlers display upon discovering they possess genitalia. Only in Chuck's case it's not so charming.

The burden of Chuck's article is that Jesus totally did so exist, and so if you steal the Baby Jesus out of a nativity scene, you've removed its penis. Or something. It's not very clear. But it alliterates!

Merry Holidays, anyway, from Thers, Molly I, flory, Rip, & va. NOW DANCE YOU GNOMES, DANCE!