Bill Hicks describes Rush Limbaugh perfectly

Pass it along :-)

Where the hell is her birth certificate?

I saw a clip of Orly Taitz's appearance on MSNBC. And I have a question: is she even an American citizen? I mean, she doesn't sound like she was born here, so where was she born? And if she wasn't born here, then by her own arguments, she wasn't born a citizen. So, if she is a citizen, I would very much like to see proof that she's actually a naturalized American citizen. And she'd better be able to prove that her certificate of US naturlization and all other supporting documentation are not forged.
That is, after all, the standard which she herself has seen fit to set for President Obama.
Bigoted cunt.

Things I will not be buying any time soon

A simple list of things I will not be buying any time soon:

1: Palm Pre. Those commercials really do not do it for me. I'm not marketing genius or anything, but I sort of thought that the idea behind commercials was to make you want to buy the product, not make you say, "I would call that the most retarded actress in the most retarded commercial ever (ever ever!), but I wouldn't want to insult the retarded by comparing them with that stupid piece of crap," and hence I will not buy that (by association) ultratarded product.

Ultratarded -- for that shit so retarded, you don't want to insult those who actually are.

2: Kindle. You'd think that someone at Amazon, the wildly succesful bookseller and maker of the Kindle, might (just maybe) understand the irony of deleting (what the buyers believed to be) legitimately purchased copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from people's Kindles once Amazon discovered that they had offered those titles for digital download sale in error. Which could make "Kindle" more than just a proper noun, it could soon be a verb.

3: The Democratic Party. If I vote for the Democrats but the Republicans still get their way on everything even though they're the minority, I might as well just vote Republican or not vote at all.

Signs and portents

Is the Gates non-troversy 2009's answer to 2001's stem-cell sophistry of George W Bush? History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. If only we can keep ourselves distracted, maybe we won't notice (again) the terrorist attack that's probably headed our way. Just a feeling...

I'm not a black man in America...

I'm not a black man in America, which probably means that what I'm about to say next automatically makes me a racist. Based on what I have heard and read about the incident, it is my opinion that Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. got exactly what he deserved. He was being an asshole, to put it bluntly. Under what circumstance does it behoove an Harvard Professor to scream at a police officer (a police officer who identified himself as such and present in response to a report of a possible break-in) that they are racist and "This is what happens to black men in America!" Lest I be remiss for failing to mention it: getting arrested also happens to white men in America when they too are intentionally uncooperative assholes to the cops.
If my neighbors called the cops because they thought someone was trying to break into my home, I'd be grateful to have neighbors that gave a damn (if not about my home, then about their own homes -- crime is contagious). If the cops responded so quickly that I didn't even have time to settle in front of the TV before they arrived, I'd be happy that I lived somewhere with a decent police force. If the cop told me he was there because someone reported a break-in then I wouldn't give him a hassle about proving to him that it was my own home I had to force my way into. Although I am not an Harvard Professor even I can figure out that the police officer is going to need me to prove that I actually have a right to be in the house if they have a reason to believe that I may not. Someone did call the police to report what they believed to be a break-in, after all.
According to the police report, it was Gates himself that made race an issue. Even given that fact, it is interesting to note that a casual perusal of the cable channels has yet to produce even a single instance of a prominent media pundit of the black persuasion who is willing to do anything other than proclaim the cop at best "racially insensitive" or at worst (with all the implications and connotations) acting (and I'm paraphrasing Eugene Robinson here when he appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe today) "perhaps unconsciously on ingrained racial biases." "Perhaps unconsciously," yeah, right. Just call the cop an out-an-out dyed in the white-cotton sheet racist already. A dissembling Pulitzer-prize winning hack is still a dissembling hack. It's worth noting, if only because so few seem to be noting it - especially all the talking heads interviewing all the pundits rushing to Gates' defense - that no one has produced any evidence that the police officer in the Gates fracas acted improperly (other than arresting Gates) or in any way instigated the incident (other than being white and not taking "racial sensitivities into account").
There are two points I can think to make right now, and I'll have to paint with broad strokes here to make them. First, if the "black community¹" demands that "white America" become color blind and treat everyone equally regardless of skin color, then the "black community" cannot demand that white police officers act in a manner that takes into account "racial sensitivities" when they are interacting with black people.² That's just hypocritical bullshit.
Second, it is precisely this kind of behavior ("This is what happens to black men in America!") from an otherwise rather urbane, genteel, very well-educated, liberal, black intellectual which alienates the otherwise liberal-minded suburban whites⁴ who President Obama referred to when, as then-candidate Obama, he tackled the issue of race in his speech over the controversy surrounding the remarks of Rev. Jeremiah Wright:

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

There comes a point, and I'll speak only for myself here, when any sense of solidarity I may feel with the black community in their quest for equal opportunity and dignity in the face of real bigotry and racism becomes exhausted when a prominent black person (OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson, and now Henry Gates, Jr.) fucks up (kills someone, fucks a child {or two, or three...}, is an asshole to a cop who's just doing their god-damned job), and the black community collectively loses their fucking minds and blames the nearest white person as the proximate cause of that particular black person's "misfortune," and "white-dominated society" as a permeating influence of disparity towards persons of color.
And I am at that point right now. In my opinion, Henry Gates fucked up. He was a belligerent, uncooperative asshole who willfully obstructed a police officer who was attempting to fulfill their obligation to the law and society. But of course anyone who says so gets labeled a racist, or "uninformed" or "naive." I'm not a black person in America, but that doesn't mean I don't get to exercise my own judgment and voice my own opinion about what is and is not a racist act, and this incident was not an act of racism.

1. "Black community" is a rhetorical device. I know that there is no monolithic "Black Community" any more than there is a monolithic "Gay Community" or "Jewish Community" or "White Community³". But if we're going to lump people together for the sake of convenience, let's at least be up front about it.
2. I would have said "dealing with" but that term probably carries too much baggage for some to stomach.
3. Excepting some of the more Republican country clubs.
4. Who are also the real Middle America, demographically speaking. Most of the country is still white - demographic trends notwithstanding, and most of it is suburban.

Credit where credit is due

Lest I be remiss, it is time that I properly acknowledge President Obama for standing up for the LGBT community in his speech before the NAACP on the occasion of that organizations one hundredth anniversary.* Usually I am quite critical of the President. And I still don't think he's doing anything meaningful to advance the cause of LGBT equality and civil rights. Not that he explicitly promised to do anything for us. It was just the usual Democratic hollow words and implied but deniable promises to win our votes followed by empty gestures and snide public repudiation once they're in office.

But anyways, President Obama did make it a point to give us a line in his NAACP speech. And that line got a decent amount of applause. So, good for them. Not everyone in the NAACP is a homophobe, and the President will at least give us a mention as fellow human beings and citizens of equal worth (albeit if he has to be shamed into doing it).

Again, good for them. But while not everyone in the NAACP is a homophobe, I still find it pretty fucking disengenuous that an organization that has worked tirelessly over the course of one hundred years to advance the cause of equality for one group of minorities is comfortable taking the position that it's still okay to let the majority discriminate against another group of minorities. Classic case of "better him than me" I guess.

So once again, thanks for standing up for us Mr. President. And thanks to all the people in the audience at the NAACP who cheered so loudly: you folks rock. It's as good a place as any to start. But it's only a start to the struggle, not an end of the obligation.

* I just realized that in English we use the same words to describe ordinal and fractional numbers. Ahh, English. Delightful.

Another late night meditaton on Israel

Here's the thing: it's hard to like Israel when it becomes that country's official policy to intentionally piss on the Palestinians and thereby piss off the rest of the Middle East and the Muslim world. The Middle East and the Muslim world then get pissed off at the US because we're Israel's friend and we just sit there and watch as the Israelis do to the Palestinians and sovereign Arab nations things we would never tolerate the Palestinians or Arab nations doing to Israel. So...
So here's what Israel needs to do for me: either officially annex the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights and publicly declare it all to be part of Israel for all eternity (Israel fought wars and won and to the victor go the spoils) and turn out all the Palestinians and turn in their one free pass for their own chance for a little ethnic cleansing (and you'd better do it soon, soppy sentiment over the Holocaust isn't going to last forever) or give it all the fuck back to Jordan, Egypt, and Syria, respectively. But make a fucking decision already. Just choose. NOW!
If the Israelis can't or won't make a final fucking choice about the disposition of the occupied territories then I for one don't give a damn if the Arab World gets together and wipes Israel off the map. I just don't. It's become just too much fucking trouble being friends with Israel because of all the baggage their political indecision entails.