Friday, September 26, 2008

Economic Resilience

Can't get this damn 'Bail-Out' business out of my head. I am laughing so hard right now. They say the economy is tanking. It isn't. An economy is tanking. The money backed by the full faith of our government and the Federal Reserve and bearing the words 'In God We Trust' is going down like a turd in a high flow toilet.

And good riddance to it.

You want answers? I don't want to give you any. But here is an option.

What is the one market that has remained steady? It has grown as the population has grown and every attempt to tamper with it has resulted in market shifts, but no noticeable declines.

I am talking about the drug trade. Pot, coke, shrooms, heroin, these things have all managed to maintain a stable rate of trade no matter how liberal the state drug laws or how draconian the federal war on drugs has been. Drugs are stable money.

You want to save the economy? Let's back up our currency with marijuana. You want to grow the economy? Grow Hemp!

That's my advice. So go put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Bail-out!

I love it. I'm not sure how in the hell the economy tanked so goddamned fast and nobody saw it coming from a mile away. Or even if it really has tanked. But people keep telling me it has. I'm pretty sure it started shortly before Bush stole office and as best I can tell it just steam rolled all the way through eight years of shit.

But I love it. Headlines sporting the phrase 'bail-out'. Beautiful. No sugar coating. Just plain ugly English. Look at that phrase. Bail-out. It's so beautifully negative.

Even as I type this and marvel at all the headlines containing the fantastic phrase 'bail-out' I see those headlines reappearing under the sickly phrase 'market rescue'.

Aw, even the media is getting in on the bail-out. How sweet.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Pandering

Government bailing out private institutions is wrong. This is the second time in my lifetime that Republicans have had to bail out banks. Not that they had to. Not really.

To someone with any kind of savings, having a bank fail is a really horrible thing. My great uncle lost a lot of money this way during the Great Depression. That is why government bails out these institutions. They are trying to prevent the panic from spreading. And they are covering their own asses.

A great number of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and don't give a rat's ass if the banks go belly up 'cuz they can always cash their check at the liquor store. It's an ignorant view, but God bless 'em their heart is in the right place.

I stick by my original platform statement on the subject, stated long before this debacle was making headlines. Firstly, switch to a voluntary taxation model so nobody has to pay for anything they don't want to. If people are in favor of the government bailout, by all means send them money to support it. Secondly, shut down the Fed! This would immediately screw all banks. Trickle down economics finally working.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Free Mullet Boy!

If you think I'd support this, you're wrong.
Free Levi!

We’ve all recently seen how evil henchman of the Republican party captured this poor innocent out of his natural habitat and forced him into a shotgun wedding, all so that their campaign narrative of fake family values could be upheld. When the 17-year-old daughter of the vice presidential candidate running on the Jesus ticket is “out to here,” it’s just better that Levi was introduced as the “fiancĂ©.” Looks a little less white trashy.
Bill Maher is a very funny man. Sure, he can sound a bit know-it-all condescending on his show. It is his show. His humor is often rooted in common sense and pokes fun at those who seem to not just defy logic, but those who run in the opposite direction screaming.

So when he encourages young Levi Johnston to abscond, where does he go wrong?

It's not that Levi fucked the daughter of a Republican governor. I'm all for that. It's the kind of thing I would do out of spite and enjoy. But what about birth control? You gotta remember to wrap up your hockey stick before the game.

You see, Levi is an idiot. He had unprotected sex with the daughter of a prominent pro-lifer. Bad idea. He is also a self-professed redneck boozer stoner hockey jock who until recently sported a mullet. If we let this guy roam the streets freely he'll have idiot spawn crowding classrooms up and down the west coast. Best to lock him up in a shotgun marriage under public scrutiny.

Besides, the likelihood that this relationship will last is practically zero. They might have a gun to his head for a maximum of eight years (and a few months). During that time he can use his new found 'friends' to get him into any college he wants, muscle into corporate power positions, and go on drunken coke binges. When this nightmare is over, he can bolt and sell story rights to FOX. If you look at the big picture, there are lots of opportunities to be had by sticking with the carrier of the abdominal parasite he helped to create. You'd think Bill Maher would recognize this terrific opportunity.

In the end Levi is just a mullet headed redneck hockey jock. He'll go along with whatever coach tells him to do.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Credit Where Due

I'll give credit where due. I still support the Lysander Spooner voluntary tax approach which will offer the largest possible tax cut of any Presidential candidate. Of the two 'majors' Obama has a much more appealing tax plan.
Tax Plans (that’s one for you, nineteen for me)

There’s a graph that Obama supporters are sending around, showing the differences between the Republican and Democrat tax cut proposals. It shows that Obama is not in fact planning to raise taxes - he’s planning to cut them for all but the very, very rich. I couldn’t help but notice though - the graph is still massively weighted towards the interests of the super-rich. For example, the bottom two-thirds of the population are given only a third of the space on the graph, while the top 0.1% of the population - one in a thousand people - gets almost 10%. What’s more, an “average tax cut” is then given, which seems to have been derived from taking a total of the nine income brackets shown and dividing it by nine. Journalists should really volunteer to take remedial arithmetic, you know. Once again, this ignores that one of the brackets represents one thousandth of the population.


Of course all either any these candidates can really do (myself included) is to sign off or veto the tax plan sent to them by Congress. It's not like we elect a temporary dictator. Those have to steal elections.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Saint Doug Stanhope

Saving Bristol
Never in history has a woman been under more pressure to keep an unwanted pregnancy than Bristol Palin. She is the teenage daughter of Alaska Governor & Vice-Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin - a conservative, Creationist Christian power-vampire and pro-life huckster who has put Bristol and her un-welcomed fetus at the center of a politico-religious crusade to stop her exercising her constitutional right to terminate the pregnancy.

Rather than sit back and impotently bemoan Bristol's tragic, lonely circumstance, it is time for us - the silent majority - to unite behind this poor, imprisoned woman and save her from both a tyrannical household as well as the horrible nightmare of a forced childbirth.

These are not empty words. I, Doug Stanhope, am offering you, Bristol Palin, the sum of 25,000 dollars so that you can abort your child and move out of that draconian home. I have also set up a PayPal link so that others around the world can help increase this amount to ease the burden of starting out on your own at such an early age.
Bless this saint of a man. His courageous endeavor brings a tear to my eye. We can only hope that Bristol hears the call. I would gladly act as her body guard as she crosses the line of protesters at the clinic.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

The Story So Far

Sinfest: The Webcomic To End all Webcomics, has managed to capture the essence of the campaign as it currently stands in a way no news source or political cartoon ever could. It even has a character that represents me. It truly is all encompassing.



You know what this means? I can't believe it hasn't been done yet. Some talented remixer needs to make Theme for Barack.
That cat Barack is a bad mother...
Watch your mouth!
Just talkin' about Barack
We can dig it
And I'll be forced to write and record my own campaign anthem, as usual. Maybe some Twisted Sister? I Wanna Roth!

Friday, September 12, 2008

Win/Win!

Fans of progressive politics who believe in the current system of democracy should rejoice.

If the Democrats win we will have the first black President.

If the Republicans win we will have the first female Vice President.

That's some guaranteed progress in the redneck backwards hick U S of A.

Unless I win. Then it's just another pair of white guys in office.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Holiday In Cambodia Pakistan

I shouldn't laugh when I read stuff like this.
George Bush secret order to send special forces into Pakistan

A secret order issued by George Bush giving US special forces carte blanche to mount counter-terrorist operations inside Pakistani territory raised fears last night that escalating conflict was spreading from Afghanistan to Pakistan and could ignite a region-wide war.
I nearly fell off my chair laughing. Actually it was the balance ball so it is fairly easy to fall off of. Still, I was laughing and saying out loud, "It's not like Vietnam how?"

In Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land the hero, Michael Valentine, one day is visiting a zoo when he finally groks people.
They laugh because it hurts...because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Bristol Palin

Is it just me, or does the pregnant teen daughter of Sarah Palin, Bristol (right), look exactly like the kind of gal you would expect to be a pregnant teen? One look at that face and I can imagine her makeup running down her rosy cheeks, hunched over and sobbing uncontrollably, her hair a clumping mess as she has to tell her enraged parents that she got knocked up.

Bristol, you would be my personal hero forever if you got an abortion, told your fiance to fuck off, and started stripping once you turned 18. Don't be a pawn in your mom's games. Take control of your destiny. Do it and I will boot my current veep choice and add you to the Jake ticket for 2012 so you can tell your mom, "Yeah, I ran for the nation's second highest office, too!". Consider it.

Sarah Palin: Great White Hunter

Wolves are good hunters. Too good for some people. They kill all of that wonderful trophy moose in Alaska preventing tourist hunters from having a crack at them. The solution?
Sarah Palin, predator control, shooting wolves | Salon

Wildlife activists thought they had seen the worst in 2003 when Frank Murkowski, then the Republican governor of Alaska, signed a bill ramping up state programs to gun down wild wolves from airplanes, inviting average citizens to participate. Wolves, Murkowski believed, were clearly better than humans at killing elk and moose, and humans needed to even the playing field.

But that was before Sarah Palin took Murkowski's job at the end of 2006. She went one step, or paw, further. Palin didn't think Alaskans should be allowed to chase wolves from aircraft and shoot them -- they should be encouraged to do so. Palin's administration put a bounty on wolves' heads, or to be more precise, on their mitts.

In early 2007, Palin's administration approved an initiative to pay a $150 bounty to hunters who killed a wolf from an airplane in certain areas, hacked off the left foreleg, and brought in the appendage.
I would be all for this if instead of shooting the wolves, people had to jump out of low flying aircraft with a knife clasped in their teeth onto a wolf, wrestle it to the ground, and hack off the limb of the still fighting beast. And they must do it while wearing a loin cloth. Anyone who managed to do that would have earned the bounty. I would personally pay the bounty to see Palin do it. Double if her pregnant daughter does it.

But to be fair, if you owned an airplane would you really want to put yourself at risk by shooting wolves from the ground? What if you miss?

Sunday, September 07, 2008

I'm Huge on the Internet

Since there are many people who will never read comments...

Jake hits the big time!

Thanks to Clusterlizard for making this happen.

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Palin Meme

The Michael Palin meme spread pretty fast. To be expected.

Friday, September 05, 2008

Non-Smokers

Non-smoking kills.
Reuters

Former British heavyweight boxing champion James Oyebola was shot in the neck in a nightclub after asking a group of men to stop smoking.
He died in just four days from his non-smoking related injuries. Smoking related deaths take years.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

McCain Picks Palin

Since I was on vacation I couldn't immediately comment on McCain's Veep pick. Upon hearing that he picked Palin, it became apparent that he was of sound mind and was in this thing to win. He picked someone that even I can support.