Archive for the 'Politics' Category

As some may know I featured my groundbreaking talks with Jesus on this site in the past. If you missed them, verily I say unto thee they are in the archives, probably under religion. If you love Jesus it’s must reading because the guy doesn’t do interviews. In fact he’s been oddly quiet publicly, reclusive even, since his death a couple of millennium ago. Go figure.

But I have the feeling we’ll be speaking again soon so I’m sure all good Christians will want to stay tuned as he takes the pulse of the laity and the country they say he created.

But what I didn’t know when J-Dog started speaking unto me was that his path of communication opened some sort of telecommunication anomaly in space/time that would allow other notable personages to have access to my bedroom, living room, or table at B&N, the three places I tend to recount events in text. Thusly, the following discussion with our 3rd President Thomas Jefferson. We did this one exclusively at Barnes & Noble. He was dressed in a smart breeches, stockings, waistcoat ensemble that clearly marked him as not only an aristocrat, slave owner, and man of leisure, but of one who had been dead for 200 years. He also sported a tannish periwig, the great power source of all men of import before the 19th century. We took tea together in the B&N’s coffee shop, the former President, answering my questions in a slightly distracted and annoyed tone as he looked up from the copy of History For Dummies he was looking at. He did this not to look at me but rather to divide his focus between his book and the backsides of numerous women whose figures seemed to both appall and affix him.
The following is a transcript of out historic consultation.

Me: So T.J. great to see you dude. How do you feel?

The former President takes a sip of his Chamomile and looks up over his bifocals to peer at me dubiously.

T.J.: Feel?

He made an expression of distaste, his lip curling at the side, his nose wrinkling ever subtly.

Me: Something wrong with the Tea?

He smiled, took another sip, returned it to the table and said:

T.J.: No.

Me: Okay then. How about getting back to the question then? If it’s not too distasteful to you?

T.J.: It is.

He paused, smiled again, peered at me over the bifocals again and answered me anyway because he knew why he was there. It wasn’t Robert Frost that opened up a portal for dead people to come through and get face time. It was me. The Dude. On some level Jefferson had to respect that. Or at least bow to that reality as harsh as it appeared for him to accept.

T.J.: How do I feel you ask after telling me how great it is to have me here. Perspective is much and here is more proof for I hold this truth to be self evident that while the term great, as you ascribe it to the emotional detritus you most assuredly bring to your discussions with such notable personages as myself mayhap be fitting within a mind so normally addressed to mediocrity as your own, it is with less than that such grand measures of emotional calculation that I address thee. …

His words trailed off as a female Barrista of decidedly appealing proportions to all generations of real Americans and patriots bent over to clear the table next to us. His head peered down and he peered upwards over the bifocals, now having more of a stern schoolmaster-ish air as he scrutinized her tight and flattering pants. One eyebrow slowly lifted as he resumed speaking…

T.J.:….But upon further consideration and seeing as this is my first, shall we say, corporeal, communication in 200 odd years perhaps I am putting too fine a point on my objection.

Me: Yeah well, it has been an odd 200 years has it not?

T.J.:Indubitably sir.

I was definitely sensing an attitude. Beyond his tone he looked at me like I was wearing a Redcoat or something. Jesus had been in a decidedly better mood during our sessions. But then Jesus probably had more to set right than this man of such archived historicity.

Me: Have you been keeping up on things?

T.J.: Apparently you do not hold these truths to be self evident that the dead have access to all your world though they are not in their day to day interests usually given to putting the affairs of the living amongst their priorities. But being a man given to not only self awareness, but also to a careful observation of Earthly matters I am of course aware of the broad wash of ebbings and flowings within the tide of histories grand sweep. Let it not be said of Thomas Jefferson that death alone was enough of an excuse to let himself become obsolete.

Me: Ok, so that’s a yes?

He didn’t answer.

Me: A No?

Me: Anyway then, you’re biggest surprise of the past 200 years?

He peered at the Barrista’s backside with what I can only describe, coming from him, as revolutionary ardor.

T.J.: I think perhaps the serving wenches. Such attire, and demonstrative lack of humility at one time would have found such a person not only banned from the establishment of any decent congregation but quite likely smoldering at a stake.

Me: Thank goodness for the enlightenment huh?

T.J.: Indeed, though I am left to wonder if the causes taken up in the name of humanism and rationality would have quite blanched if vouchsafed a glimmer into a future of such wanton carnality. Do not get me wrong scribe, I am the first to celebrate the graduation of mankind’s repression from the sacred corridors of superstition, but there was something to be said for discretion and the imagination. To put it to you otherly I have already, in just a passing moment of voyeurism managed to encapsulate many of the traditional results a man would have hoped to accrue to himself from a more lengthy courtship with such a creature.

Me: Yeah it’s great. I don’t understand that last part though.

T.J.: Let me put it to you in terms one such as yourself is likely to understand then shall I. Indeed I shall. In short order and without provision my able seamen have declared their independence far before the rest of the military could act on its orders from the chief of staff.

Me: Ahhh. Just so I understand you correctly you’re saying you fired a warning shot across the bough of your breeches?

T.J.: I knew I could count on your coarse and indecent nature scrivener.

Me: Yeah we’re on the same page here. Let me ask you this: Was “otherly,” really an accepted word in your day?

T.J.: You seek to put me to task for grammar? The freedom that allows you to sit here writing whatever defecations of thought that proceed in backward fashion from out of your mouth and into your pen, why that very freedoms letters were spilled in large part from my lifeblood. You have phrases to spasmodically turn and sentences to bloodily butcher because I was able to express myself succinctly and eloquently in times that most stressed a bodies calm and lucid expression. That I did so well and properly would seem to be implied by not only the success of the nation I did help conceive but by the fact that someone of such lowly birth as yourself can sit here insulting my intelligence.

Me: So you made otherly up didn’t you?

T.J. It is self evident.

Me: Cool. So back to women. Black or white? Let’s settle the debate once and for all.

T.J.: All women, not unlike men, are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Though they not be granted official qualification in the legislative legerdemain of our particular epoch, they are and were created equal in the eyes of the sacred and blessed.

Me: And..?

He looked at me challengingly for a moment and then finally let a softening smile play about his mouth before adding:

T.J.: Yes, whether a woman be white or black there should be no marginalization in the eyes of man based on the varying shades and hues god colored us all with, and that all women though they be equal in all categories of judgment are spared that balanced measure in but the one area that marks them; that is to say a distinguishing mark can be placed upon woman, as it has assuredly been from their creator, by a quality of excess; such surplus being measured in warmth and it’s varying degrees steeped in a judgment of such not born of atmospheric measures or gradations of wetness in the air but of a warmth taken more of the observers lack or possession of a dry heat.

Me: How hot they are you mean?

T.J.: Indubitably.

Me: But which did you mark more often Tommy? Which moved you more to a warmer climate with a wet heat? Black or white?

T.J. Though I take your meaning sir I must preface my response with a warning. If perchance you happen to call me Tommy again in place of my given name which I am quite sure you understand to be Thomas, a fact that is not only written of historically, but one which should be assumed of anyone with said given name before truncating it in an overly familiar effort of familiarization that in it’s truest sense can indeed find outlet with ones friends and comrades, who in my case have been known to address me as one Tom in lighthearted moments and in informal surroundings; but if you, who I do not count as friend or equal should address me in such fashion again, even with the shortened sobriquet of more accepted method, indeed if you call me anything but Thomas, itself a concession to the unusual nature of our interview since it would be not inappropriate to expect you to refer to me as nothing but Mr President; but if you should refer to me in any of the aforementioned familiar ways I will be forced to do things to you that will make many of the more notable revolutionary battles seem tame when the results are viewed by others.

Me: You’re saying you will go all Bunker Hill on my ass?

T.J.: It is self evident.

Me: Sure. Anyway, Black or white? Which was more alluring to a noble and esteemed fucking President such as yourself?

T.J.: Neither.

Me: Ahhh, Milato then?

T.J.: Indubitably.

Me: Well that does explain a lot. So were you really hooked up with Sally?

T.J.: Hooked up?

Me: Did you declare the independence of your sovereign nation in her pants and then keep doing so as a united nation?

T.J.: We were a confederacy of sorts.

Me: Nothing wrong with that. You know Weezy Jefferson was one of the first T.V. Women I hoisted my own flag to if you know what I’m saying.

T.J. A charming image.

Me: You know sometimes I think The Jefferson’s did more for race relations in this country than the founding fathers. Come on, you know you would have tapped Weezy if she were, you know, working the plantation as they say.

T.J.: They didn’t.

Me: Didn’t what?

T.J.: Say that.

Me: Wise ass

T.J.: Yes, a fitting term, even accolade from one such yourself for attributes said to reside in ones posterior, while arresting in a carnal way would be of no wonder if they’re mental parallel did not find at least it’s equal in your mind. Why indeed it would be no wonder at all if over the course of my lifetime I hadn’t shat more wisdom and eloquence than you have spoken.

Me: You’re a funny fucking dead president aren’t you?

T.J.: You’re fancy and comical Jesus was surely not my equal?

Me: He’s not my Jesus. The guy who played him in the 1st Century just talks to me sometimes. But no, in the humor area, he’s not your fucking equal Mr President. Let’s get back to politics shall we.

T.J.: I hadn’t realized we had ever been diverted from lofty discussions; rather it seems as if I have come through the dark portals of hereafter merely to suffer your insipid and banal attempts at titillation.

Me: You said tit.

Silence.

Me: Before illation. Tit-illation. Heh heh. Heh heh…….Ok then Thomas.

I said his name real slow and archly. He had no response. I really nailed him there. I continued.

Me: The current Presidential race? What do you think of the campaigns?

T.J.: While I am not without my partisan emotions tugging from different sides I am awaiting one side to finally address the issue that seems to be an unspoken and indeed unspeakable white elephant in the debating room.

Me: Race relations?

Nothing.

Me: American hypocrisy in foreign policy? Campaign finance? Destructive capitalism? What?

T.J.: These are trifling issues. Mere ephemeralities of the age. I speak of a far more dangerous and long standing threat to our national well being and safety. One of such a dire and malevolent nature that even to speak of it in this age has apparently become the most poisoned of taboos.

Me: Hillary’s face lift?

Jefferson pounded the table at that point getting us even more attention than a man in a big horsehair whig, breeches, and uncountable layers of shirts and jackets would normally get in a Starbucks, and then he actually yelled the following:

T.J.: I speak of course of the damned British!!

He made damned sound like two words. Like Dam-ned. Like Homer going off on Flanders.

Me: The fucking British?

T.J: Aye. You have finally put something in a way I could not have surpassed myself. The fucking British indeed. Fuck them!

He was pretty worked up at this point. He adjusted his wig, straightened his waistcoat, cleared his throat and resumed.

T.J.: Will not your Clinton dynasty, your man of hope, or my old friend John McCain, ever address this matter of most egregious harm and dire threat to the foundations of this country that I laid down along with such learned and stalwart gentlemen as Adams, Washington, and Hamilton?

Me: And all the poor and black men who died fighting the British right?

T.J.: The what now?

Me: The dead guys. Mostly poor and uneducated you sacrificed for lower taxes.

T.J.: And for what! So that you now fight beside them in your wars both of global and local impact, read their books full of quaint and studied verbiage and dub them classics as if written in other ink than the blood of the oppressed, borrow their television ideas in wretched attempt to emulate calumny and perfidy, laugh at their ironic juvenalia as if the dryness of their humor were not born of the dryness of their souls, honor them with best acting awards on our own soil for skills assuredly hereditary to a breed of scoundrels who have spent centuries acting as if they were human, and fawn over their accent which was long ago affected by the diabolical insertion of a cripples walking stick up through their progenitors arses until it traveled the length of their bodies and cleft their palette so that they must speak upward and haughtily as if to keep from seeing their empty words drop to the ground and back to the devil who spawned them?!!!!!

Me: Uhh, wow dude. We’re kind of over all that taxation without representation stuff now. These aren’t your father’s Brits anymore you know?

T.J: NONSENSE!

On this note I told him I would get a beverage while he calmed himself. I’ll use that break to end part 1 of these historic conversations with Thomas Jefferson. Part 2 of what should probably be a 3 part interview based on that nights material will be up shortly.

Lost is back, the national election may be set Tuesday night, my Giants are in the Super Bowl, my Mets got Johan Santana. Can I smile yet?

While Obama keeps getting more of the kind of buzz I’d hoped he’d get I can’t shake the feeling Hillary is wrapping this thing up on Super Tuesday. Obama keeps getting all the big endorsements but I doubt that matters. I don’t think people care about endorsements. The people and news outlets who make endorsements care because it’s a symbiotic relationship with them feeding off each others ego and building on their isolated concepts of how important they are.

But I think Obama needs to make up too much ground in too many states Tuesday to win many of them. And although I see evidence that the youth and the black vote is swinging heavily towards Obama unfortunately young people and blacks don’t vote as much as old white people and middle class white women. And in those areas it seems Hillary still has a more than small edge. So while everyone is talking about a horse race going down to the wire I fear after Tuesday we’ll have exactly the tired and cynical final two pretty much everyone expected for 4 years.

Hillary and McCain.

So we can look forward to months of pandering and pundits opening wide ready to take in their bile and regurgitate it back out to us. Honestly it’s absolutely amazing how the media falls into lockstep behind whatever messages these candidates spin doctors tell them is the message. The Daily Show has always done a great job of illustrating this. Whether with the Bush administration and its spokespeople or during the campaign we’re in now when you see Jon Stewart play media talking head after head after head all saying the exact same things on the exact same days at virtually the exact same time, and playing it off like it’s something coming out of their own head, you get a sense of how absolutely Orwellian the whole thing is.

But what happens is a White House spokesperson, or more to the point of late, campaign advisors put out the idea they want perpetuated, right down to phraseology like “Hillary Clinton shows her soft side,” or “Obama takes off the gloves,” and then hours later everybody on TV is using these phrases and spinning a new mythology. Often it’s even more transparent and convoluted than that but it still is mimicked verbatim as the MSM continues to shirk their duty as the 4th estate and instead act as an extension of the other 3.

So get ready for debates where McCain spin Dr’s tell the media who gather afterward that McCain showed what a spry and energetic fox he is to combat the idea that he’s too old and will die in office, and then having to listen to every media outlet say, “Last night John McCain showed what a spry and energetic fox he is.” Or something like that but probably a bit more pithy because those are too many words for America to process in the smaller parts of the brain that these campaigns are trying to appeal to.

Look forward to Hillary’s Karl Rove, an equally pasty, lascivious looking slug of a man named Mark Penn, telling reporters that Hillary sure looked unflappable, resolute and passionate up there when McCain challenged her on Iraq and then have to hear Wolf Blitzer et al tell us “An unflappable HIllary Clinton shows her passion and resolve towards Iraq.” Of course Penn won’t use the word resolve because like Karl Rove he’ll want mainly to appeal to people for whom resolve or resolution is most likely something the Sun does around the Earth.

And we’ll get more of these idiots trying to con us that they’re all about issues and policies and substantial debates. I hear people say Obama isn’t as strong in his policies and plans. What the fuck are people talking about? All these people are campaigning with variations on a theme. There are such fine lines between all of them in both parties. And how often does anyone follow up campaign promises pr platforms they run on? That’s all strategy. It’s not an ideal. It’s not a mission. It’s not why they’re running.

I like Obama because he can think on the fly. He’s sharp, well-spoken, intelligent, and doesn’t insult peoples intelligence. Or at least expects them to have some. He doesn’t pander as shamelessly and isn’t afraid to say unpopular things. Remember he’s the only guy in this thing that didn’t vote for invading Iraq. The only one with enough guts to not pretend and give in to patriotic fervor. While Hilary says the problem with Iraq wasn’t the idea but rather the execution, Obama can remain firm that it was wrong from the get-go and based on lies. Hillary either didn’t have the guts to stand up to everyone in 2003 or didn’t do her homework.

To me Obama is a guy who once in office will be able to alter the game plan depending on the situations. I’d rather have a President who can take in changing information and new facts and adapt to them then one who acts as if believing the same thing all the time no matter what is a virtue. It’s not a virtue.

It’s a mental disorder.

Hopefully I’m wrong about Tuesday. Maybe Obama can get a lot more of Edwards supporters and that closes the gap even more. Maybe Bill Clinton calls New York Hymietown. Maybe Mitt Romney explains the whole John Smith myth Mormons believe and people are so hysterical with the laughter when they vote they can’t see what they’re doing through the tears in their eyes. Maybe Hillary forgets which State she’s in and tells California voters immigration is bad, Iraq wasn’t a bad idea, and Jesus told her so.

As for Lost the Mets, Giants etc well this post went on longer than I wanted so forget it. For now anyway.

Go Giants.

They have very little chance tomorrow. People have become delusional about this game. But it was a nice ride and hopefully it’s a decent game.

And go Giants anyway!

If anybody actually read what I wrote on here before my departure and the ghettoizing of the old site, (winks to Bob in all his Gueverra-ness), it’s safe to assume they are gone now. This is but a message in a bottle with little chance of being read by any other than fellow castaway Che himself.

Nevertheless I was just moved by a politician and needed to throw a bottle at something.

This rarely happens. And with the 08 election season heating up it is especially notable that this inspiration comes from someone running for President. It is the final piece of information I needed to fully decide on a candidate I will support. My support is not entirely a good thing since I’m a Mets fan and tend to gravitate to losers. In fact one of the reasons I like them is for possessing qualities others don’t like and that make them unlikely to win. The same goes here for this candidate. He’s probably not going to win and what he said will probably be one of the reasons. And yet it makes me love him.

I’d said I would never post again but I needed to vent. Probably need to about many things but this is the only one anyone will do a google search for and someone might read or care about. Or that is of any importance. So I put it up into the insignificance of cyber space rather than just the growing insignificance of my own head because what’s a castaway to do when they want to go home so bad and don’t know how to build a boat?

So who am I supporting. As you can tell by my personal pronoun choice it’s not Hillary.

That leaves everyone else.

It’s Mitt Romney.

I’m kidding.

Actually it’s Barack Obama.

Mormons are stupid.

I leaned towards him for a while. He’s come across as a different breed of politician to me. He comes off as far more serious, intelligent, well spoken, and well meaning than anyone else. And now comes the news that he not only does not wear a flag pin but he’s willing to admit that its a statement and take the risk of alienating himself from a large section of the country that thinks flags and ribbons make them better people than actually doing stuff to make them better people.

Obama said “I won’t wear that pin.” He added that what he does and says will be a, “testimony to my patriotism.”

So here’s a man echoing MLK and basically calling out all the superficial robots who put public displays above the content of a man’s character. Obama clearly is calling for substance over form and making the fact that these pins and ribbons have been co-opted by the right as a political statement and tacit support of Bush a little more than the unspoken dirty secret I’ve believed it to be.

Apparently Obama has also stated that he doesn’t say “I love you,” preferring to show love to his wife because the words I love you have replaced, “true love.”

Again this guy is getting right up my alley with this stuff. Just that need to be something more than another automoton spitting out platitudes that no one really understands or means. Anyone can say this stuff. Words are a weapon in the wrong mouths and just as much a predatory tool of natural selection as raping, pummeling, stealing, and killing. Wanting to be better than that and wring something a bit more evolved out of ourselves whether we can live up to it or not, is to me as elementary as breathing.

This is as opposed to someone like John McCain who had the fucking collossal nerve to recently tell Belief Net that America was founded on Christian ideals and that he could not support a non-Christian running for President.

McCain is becoming everything wrong about the process. By trying to elevate himself above these base instincts that are more a part of our primal brain than our frontal cortex, Obama is moving away from the pack. Unfortunately for him and myself this will probably make him less likely to win. In fact this could spell his end. Fox News and some other outlets are killing him for saying this. Some Hitler spawnish waspy imperious opinion slut on Fox actually compared Obama’s emphasis on “that,” pin with Clinton’s on “that woman,” as in he didn’t sleep with that woman.

Because of course they’re both Democrats who are incredibly bright and not wearing patriotic jewelry is like fucking another woman other than your wife.

And both these things are far worse than using the tragedy of 9-11 to step by step institute an agenda built on greed and imperialism that kills thousands and thousands of Americans and countless Iraqi’s. You can appoint your unqualified buddies to pivotal positions and remain oblivious when their incompetence destroys numerous lives but fuck man you got to wear some America bling to prove you really are with us and not against us. Because everything is just that black and white in the happy Biblical world of 21st century American politics.

Again though, what makes me love him will probably destroy him. Maybe that’s much like myself and what I do to my life. Hopefully for Obama he has no more choice than I do because he has eaten of the tree and can’t pretend it’s anything but a tree. I want a President who knows we are related to monkeys but is fully committed to not acting like one. I expect this of myself, often to my detriment, and I want it of a world leader. I’m hoping against hope these are not mutually exclusive qualities to winning. Or being happy. But they probably are. So be it.

If Gore gets in I may waver. Either way it’s time to bring some intellectualism back to the White House.

I am the dude and I support Barack Obama for President.