Ahh! Them was the days!!

Dumbfuckistan Lives On ~or~ Fuck the South, Part II

These maps are from the post election period in 2004 when it seemed the country might be lost for good and every sane person I knew was seriously considering emigrating. Since Obama's election many are cautiously optimistic, but it still feels like Dumbfuckistan to me.

As recently as 2004, more than half the voters in this country thought Bush had done a bang-up job in his first term and in 2008, after four more nightmare years and the worst economic times in the better part of a century, almost half the people in this country still voted for McCain/Palin (!) and a continuation of Bush's policies. This was after he: turned a record surplus into a record deficit; lied us into a war that's projected to cost about 2 trillion dollars and counting, has killed or maimed tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraquis, and has proved to be a jihadi recruiter's dream; prosecuted said war with mind-boggling ineptitude; gutted environmental regulations, usually in secret, sometimes literally in the middle of the night; presided over a massive, unprecedented upward transference of wealth; declared war on science, data and intellectualism; tortured people who turned out to be guilty of absolutely nothing; enabled the banks to engage in a massively leveraged Ponzi scheme; and claimed he got his marching orders from God--which should seriously offend anyone who believes in Him.

And after all that, do you know when -- and only when -- the tipping point was finally reached and our enlightened populace finally turned on Boy George in significant enough numbers to make the election of a rational, sentient being a possibility? When gas prices went up toward the very end of his term.

"Bankrupt the country? Hey; math's hard and shit happens. Steal from the poor and give to the rich? As long's ah get mah $12 a year tax cut ah'm happy. No weapons of mass destruction? Hell, they'll turn up anyday. Slaughter innocents, destroy the planet? No problemo. But mess with mah god-given-right to drive mah Saudi Utility Vehicle to the mall for cheap and by-god you've gone too far, son".

Truly a nation of moral and intellectual giants.

Fuck the South

Note: I did not write the following extremely funny, obscene, hyperbolic rant (I'd love to take credit for it) but rather it was written by an author whose identity is unknown to me. It was making the rounds shortly after one of the most shameful episodes in recent history; the re-election of George W. Bush. I mean, you had to be pretty damn obtuse to vote for him the first time...but the second?! A fucking moron.

To my suthrin friends: I'm well aware that not everyone in the south is an imbecile nor everyone in the north enlightened. If the attitudes lampooned don't apply, this ain't aimed at you. If they do; it is.

Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are states we want to keep.

And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really?

Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?

No, No. Get the fuck out. We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately "Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years" dickheads. Fuck off.

Arrogant? You wanna talk about us Northeasterners being fucking arrogant? What's more American than arrogance? Hmmm? Maybe horsies? I don't think so. Arrogance is the fucking cornerstone of what it means to be American. And I wouldn't be so fucking arrogant if I wasn't paying for your fucking bridges, bitch.

All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you, so shut up and enjoy your fucking Tennessee Valley Authority electricity and your fancy highways that we paid for. And the next time Florida gets hit by a hurricane you can come crying to us if you want to, but you're the ones who built on a fucking swamp. "Let the Spanish keep it, it’s a shithole," we said, but you had to have your fucking orange juice.

The next dickwad who says, "It’s your money, not the government's money" is gonna get their ass kicked. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and pay the least... can you guess? Go on, guess. That’s right, motherfucker, they're red states. And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? It’s too easy, asshole, they’re blue states. It’s not your money, assholes, it’s fucking our money. What was that Real American Value you were spouting a minute ago? Self reliance? Try this for self reliance: buy your own fucking stop signs.

Let’s talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? It’s fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marriage universe. Yes, that’s right, the state you love to tie around the neck of anyone to the left of Strom Thurmond has the lowest divorce rate in the fucking nation. Think that’s just some aberration? How about this: 9 of the 10 lowest divorce rates are fucking blue states, asshole, and most are in the Northeast, where our values suck so bad. And where are the highest divorce rates? Care to fucking guess? 10 of the top 10 are fucking red-ass we're-so-fucking-moral states. And while Nevada is the worst, the Bible Belt is doing its fucking part.

But two guys making out is going to fucking ruin marriage for you? Yeah? Seems like you're ruining it pretty well on your own, you little bastards. Oh, but that's ok because you go to church, right? I mean you do, right? Cause we fucking get to hear about it every goddamn year at election time. Yes, we're fascinated by how you get up every Sunday morning and sing, and then you're fucking towers of moral superiority. Yeah, that's a workable formula. Maybe us fucking Northerners don't talk about religion as much as you because we're not so busy sinning, hmmm? Ever think of that, you self-righteous assholes? No, you're too busy erecting giant stone tablets of the Ten Commandments in buildings paid for by the fucking Northeast Liberal Elite. And who has the highest murder rates in the nation? It ain't us up here in the North, assholes.

Well this gravy train is fucking over. Take your liberal-bashing, federal-tax-leaching, confederate-flag-waving, holier-than-thou, hypocritical bullshit and shove it up your ass.

And no, you can't have your fucking convention in New York next time. Fuck off.

Sarah’s Straight Talk

Truly, Sarah Palin has come a long way. When she ran for vice president, she frequently became disjointed and garbled when she departed from her prepared remarks. Now the prepared remarks are incoherent, too.

“And a problem in our country today is apathy,” she said on Friday as she announced that she would resign as governor of Alaska at the end of the month. “It would be apathetic to just hunker down and ‘go with the flow.’ Nah, only dead fish ‘go with the flow.’ No. Productive, fulfilled people determine where to put their efforts, choosing to wisely utilize precious time ... to BUILD UP.”

Basically, the point was that Palin is quitting as governor because she’s not a quitter. Or a deceased salmon.

Sarah Barracuda made her big announcement Friday afternoon on the lawn of her home to an audience that appeared to include only Todd, the kids and the next-door neighbors. Smiling manically, she looked like a parody of the woman who knocked the Republicans dead at their convention. She babbled about her parents’ refrigerator magnet, which apparently had a lot of wise advice. And she recalled her visit with the troops in Kosovo, whose dedication and determination inspired her to ... resign.

“Life is about choices!” declared the nation’s most anti-choice politician.

People, what is going on with governors in this country? Are we doomed to see them go bonkers one by one, state by state?

The timing of Palin’s announcement was extremely peculiar. Not only did she interrupt the plans of TV newscasters to spend the entire weekend pointing out that Michael Jackson is still dead, she delivered her big news just as the nation was settling into Fourth of July celebrations. You’d have thought she didn’t want us to notice.

“I choose to work very hard on a path for fruitfulness and productivity,” she said in a fairly typical moment. “I choose not to tear down and waste precious time, but to build up this state and our country, and her industrious, generous, patriotic free people!”

Palin has a year and a half left to go in her term of office. The political world had been wondering whether she’d run for re-election. The answer is no. And furthermore, it turns out that Palin believes that the only way her administration can “continue without interruption” is for her to end it.

Anyhow, no point in wasting precious time.

One underlying theme in Palin’s remarks was that many ethics complaints have been filed against her on issues ranging from her alleged attempts to get her former brother-in-law fired from the state troopers to charging Alaska for her children’s travel expenses.

Perhaps there is some new and interesting scandal that Palin has yet to let us in on. (If so, I hope it involves a soul mate.) Otherwise, it would appear that this is all about her desire to start raising money and setting up operations for a presidential run in 2012. Her fans immediately interpreted the resignation as a canny move to get her back down to the lower 48, with as much time on her hands as Mitt Romney. (Mary Matalin called it “brilliant.”)

Palin was the subject of a devastating article in this month’s Vanity Fair by Todd Purdum, who wrote that McCain campaign aides found it almost impossible to get Palin to prepare for her disastrous interview with Katie Couric. And there is no sign, Purdum reported, that Palin has made any attempt to bone up on the issues so that next time around, she could run as a candidate who actually had some grasp of the intricacies of foreign and domestic policy.

So if she’s starting to run, it will be as the same reporter-avoiding, generalization-spouting underachiever that she was last time around.
Now we know she not only doesn’t have the concentration to read a policy paper, she can’t focus long enough to finish the job she was hired to do.

On Friday, Palin said that finishing out her term would be just too easy. “Many just accept that lame-duck status, hit the road, draw the paycheck and ‘milk it.’ I’m not putting Alaska through that,” she said.

Apparently, she’s going to put the rest of us through it instead.

~Gail Collins

R.I.P. Bernie Madoff - or - You Can't Cheat an Honest Man

When I was a boy, a shady-looking character sidled up to my father on a midtown street, whispered a few words, and slunk away when my father shook his head sternly at him.

I asked my father what the guy wanted, and he told me he had tried to sell him a cheap, knock-off watch and that the trick was to behave furtively so that the potential buyer would infer the watch was stolen and hence worth much more than was being asked for it. Pop went on to say that the scam couldn't work on him in any event, even if he wasn't wise to it, since "I don't buy stolen goods".

Clearly most if not all of Madoff's victims assumed that he had insider contacts and information -- illegal to trade on, of course -- that all but guaranteed his past and ongoing outsized success. And instead of behaving like the apparently archaic, stiff-backed moralist who was my dad, they smiled, winked and eagerly bought the watch.

21st Century Republican Glossary

Socialism - An unalloyedly evil system of government utilizing progressive taxation as proposed by Adam Smith in the eighteenth century wherein the highest marginal tax rates for the top 1 % of earners are ever so slightly higher than they were under George W. Bush but significantly lower than they were under George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Racist - Any non-white person.

Meritocracy - A system wherein the son accrues social and economic benefits and opportunities in direct proportion to the merits and achievements of the father.

Treason - Any disagreement with or questioning of the policies of a Republican administration.

Patriotism - Any disagreement with or questioning of the policies of a Democratic administration.

Democrat Party - The Democratic Party. See: Socialism

Tyranny - Any proposed legislation limiting in even the slightest way the private ownership of automatic weapons, mortars, anti-tank guns, Teflon jacketed bullets, etc.

Freedom - My God-given right to dictate your behavior and religious practices according to my fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

Wealth Distribution, Equitable - An elusive but approaching Republican goal wherein the top 1% of the population (see: The worthy; The elect) owns/controls 99% of the wealth and the bottom 99% (see: Losers) owns/controls 1%. For an example of Equitable Wealth Distribution as it exists in the current world, see: Haiti

Global Warming - A myth promulgated by socialists in order to limit the ability of the righteous to make money.

Bug Week in the Catskills

I've just returned from three days in the Catskills where I met up with friends Cwfly and Bambooboy as well as local denizens Kmgunn, Upstate Trout, Ken, and Mikec.

The last week of May is known as bug week due to the profusion of hatches that occur at that time. Alas, a surfeit of recent rain had both the Beaverkill and Willowemoc -- as well as the east and west branches of the Delaware -- too high and discolored to allow for much in the way of productive fishing.

But fish we did nonetheless, mostly up in the headwaters of the Willow, where the currents were not quite so fearsome and the water at least translucent if not precisely clear. The odd small brookie and wild brown were the best any of us could conjure up and late Friday afternoon a torrential downpour further muddied the waters and left us as wet as if we were completely submerged as opposed to standing in the river merely up to our thighs.

However, dinner at Kmgunn's old farmhouse high up in the hills was alone worth the trip, with the delightful Mrs. Kmgunn, the equally charming Mrs. Upstate Trout, and the two little Kmgunns -- Caroline and Stella -- providing a much needed seasoning of yin to the salty yang of the stew. Good friends, good victuals, good liquor. The special award for stamina goes to Cwfly who had left his home in Connecticut at three AM and showed no diminution in energy, good spirits or intelligibility as midnight approached despite the rigors of the day and his imbibing his equitable share of alcoholic refreshment.

Saturday morning's fishing was no more productive so we spent the afternoon hanging around at the Catskill flyfishing center having coffee and "friendship cake" with Agnes (friendship cake takes three weeks to make and is a "pain in the neck" according to Agnes) before repairing to the lawn to cast various rods and swap lies in the belated -- but quite welcome -- warm May sun. This was followed by a trip next door to Mikey's house to see if we could help him reduce his beer stock, after which we paid a visit to Ed Van Put across the street.

The Bambooboy and I decided to give the Beaverkill a try Saturday evening, and although armed with local knowledge of secret spots and notwithstanding my heroic forays down and back up various scree or mud covered 60 degree inclines to virtually inaccessible spots we caught no fish and only spotted a few sporadic risers. But we worked it conscientiously until after dark before hieing us off to the bar at the Rockland House after which we retired to the understated elegance of our quarters, there to sleep the sleep of the just and dream of singing reels.