A WORD ABOUT FEINSTEIN

Remember when the advent of two female Senators from the state of California was "noteworthy"? When it was "significant?" When it seemed to auger a "new era" in US politics? Surely I'm not imagining the whole thing: it was a big deal, wasn't it? I'm sure it was.

Perhaps those who, several years ago, thought we should "celebrate" the apparently flabbergasting fact of California's Senators both being women, might have spared a moment to ponder what it really meant, in hard-boiled practical terms. Which was ... not much.

Now that Feinstein has established her Lieberman-in-drag credentials beyond all doubt, by conspiring with Chuck Schumer to ensure that alleged human Mukasey will have no real problem becoming the next Attorney General, I wonder if those who think her sex is an important aspect of her political career might actually re-think their position. After all, this is hardly the first time Feinstein has savagely poked us all in our collective eyeball; as a noted war profiteer, she's supported the Bush wars from the start, and has been an enthusiastic neo-con enabler of the highest order. She's the quintessential large-D Democrat, with all that entails, here at the nadir of the North American republic. The irresistible imperative of being a monumental hypocrite and cringing coward, in the best 21st-Century DLC tradition, far and away trumps all considerations of gender having any role to play in the polluted political atmosphere in DC. Corporate-inspired corruption is, sad to relate, a gender-neutral phenomenon.

Alright -- you can all untwist your knickers and ratchet down the self-righteousness. I don't bad-mouth Dianne Feinstein because of any closet misogynistic tendencies; I bad-mouth her because she's a goddamned corporate shill in a Senator suit. This is something to keep in mind, all you Hillary diehards out there, you misguided halfwits who're convinced there's really a difference between male and female politicians. They are what they are ... the precise composition of their gonads notwithstanding.

But I do remember when having two women in the Senate seemed significant. It's just another Bush-era joke anymore ...

JOBLESS GIBBERISH AMONG THE DRUNK PEOPLE

I'll say one thing for being gainfully employed -- it largely spares you the burden of having to pay attention to just how stupid people are when they're drunk ... OK, yeah, so they're just as stupid when they're sober, so what the fuck am I talking about?

I apologize. I keep thinking that my personal melodrama would have some value to anybody besides myself. How ridiculous.

Maybe you all could give me the benefit of the doubt, since I'm trying to re-orient myself to being out of work for the first time in almost thirteen years. I'm a little rusty at the jobless slacker wastoid thing, you see. With about five weeks worth of severance pay, and a soon-to-be cashed out 401(k) to fall back on, apparently I'll have plenty of time to adjust to my new (old) status as unemployed bar souse; I can already feel the sloppy allure and magnetic attraction of lazy indolence, even as I pointlessly ogle the shapely collection of waitresses that seems to congregate around this midtown Sacramento brewpub, to no good purpose. The stationary panic that lies bubbling just below the surface is screaming, most incoherently, that I should be doing the responsible thing and get out there and find a job. Apparently, I'm not listening.

Honestly -- why should I listen to the more commonsensical centers of my battered psyche, when we're collectively teetering on the precipice of ... whatever it is we're teetering on. I seriously can't fathom why I should strive and struggle and hack and tear and toil myself into a triple-bypass frenzy, merely so's I can re-enter the insane economic struggle I was only losing anyway. Well, living in the street is a pretty good incentive, I guess; I don't really covet starving to death either. But it seems like a losing battle one way or another, employed or not. No crap job ever solved anything, much in the same way a Democratically-controlled Congress is no answer to the dire political/Constitutional crisis that is eviscerating this country: like handing the Republicans their scaly asses after the last midterm election, it just feels good to be offered a new gig. But then, the stark frigidity of reality makes its presence felt all too soon, and you understand that nothing has changed, not really. What does that remind you of?

Jesus, sounds like I'm plumbing ever new depths of negative snark, if that were possible. Actually, I'm surprisingly optimistic, under the circumstances. I'm not destitute -- yet -- and I'm fortunate to have a tightly-knit family that simply won't let anybody sink out of sight ... in the meantime, I have time to think, and to tickle the ass crack of whatever muse is fucking around with my karma, at least a little bit. Things could be much worse. Or better, but that's neither here nor there.

So then, take care my friends -- don't work too hard. I'm going to order another amber ale, and learn how to groove with all the drunks I secretly despise. It's the least I could do ...

I FEEL LIKE THE ONLY PERSON HERE WHO GETS IT

Evening at the brewpub -- it's been so long since I indulged this particular weakness, this unhealthy splurge of time, money, and mental capacity. Anyway, while the well-groomed midtown chuckleheads chatter non-stop about ... something or other, and the NBA game on the jumbotroid teevee overlooks it all, I'm sitting here like a gearheaded retard with my laptop, streaming the Mike Malloy show. It feels like I'm the only one paying attention. To anything. It's so weird.

Unemployment is such a blast.

HAVING MY EMPLOYMENT WOES SOLVED FOR ME

A Sunday morning time-waster for everybody, not that it should actually have any actual resonance for you all out there -- wherever you are. Anyway, I was informed this past Friday that my lowly position, with the bloated trans-national corporation that shall remain nameless, is to be officially terminated. I've been "offered" a demotion and a pay cut; I intend to accept neither from these subhuman shysters, so for all intents and purposes, I'm heading into lay-off country. Frankly, it's been a long time since I've visited that drab wasteland ... I wonder if I'll even recognize it. At least they've solved my lousy job dilemma for me. How nice of them.

Anyway, now I can participate in the general strike being planned for November 6th without suffering any financial penalty. That's something, I suppose.

THE "DINO" DILEMMA -- ANOTHER HOPELESS SCREED

I haven't spent much time online lately, for a variety of personal reasons that wouldn't be of any interest to anybody, I'm sure. The web thing gets all so tiresome anyway, particularly the blogs with their constant repetition and regurgitation of doom and snark and despair. And that, of course, applies perfectly to this blog, so I know what I'm talking about here. One topic that so many bloggers spout off about -- and one I usually avoid -- is the ridiculous three-ring circus of Presidential politics, and the relative merits of candidates and all that depressing bullshit. It's especially popular among self-declared "democrats" or "liberals" or (my personal favorite, in the irony category) "progressives," desperate to establish iron-clad rhetorical edifices that prove why their choice of Presidential contender is the only one that's legitimate and/or correct, or whatever. They're all entitled to their opinions, since in this ignorant and largely disempowered age, opinion is pretty much all we have. Public opinion plays no authentic role within the political sphere of things, however. Perhaps it never has.

Well. Staking out a position over a specific candidate, pro or con, is absurd. "Debating" the qualities of Hillary Clinton or Obama, or any of the others, does nothing but create the illusion that something important is going on. Comparing them is an empty exercise; whatever real differences you might manage to glean are, at best, superficial and unimportant, and they usually revolve around minor tactical questions about how to achieve the basic goals that all members of the corporate-political class are devoted to. It's akin to trying to dig up true distinctions between the Republican and Democratic parties -- fundamentally, there aren't any, not in the areas that matter most. The same applies to individuals within the parties, particularly those running for national office.

What seems to escape most "liberals" or "progressives" is that focusing all attention on their machine-politician of choice completely -- totally, disastrously -- misses the point. Hoisting the flag for a particular Presidential candidate, hollering over each other about Hillary’s war-pimping proclivities or Obama's lack of lapel pins or Kucinich's unelectability, and all the other dreck and drivel of this sort, serves only one purpose: like most media-driven distractions in this era, it helps to obscure the fact that the United States is a democratic republic in name only.

Might as well face up to this particular truth. What do we have to lose, really, in acknowledging a little reality? Very little actually, at this late date. Most would agree that real democratic self-government has a critically important participatory component; if there is no participation, it's a fraud. Of course, this is a reference to all the anonymous chuckleheads out there, the drones and clods and gridlock jockeys -- just ordinary folk trying to live their ordinary lives in the most ordinary ways. When have they -- well, we -- ever truly participated in the ponderous process of governing ourselves? But, one might argue, this nation is organized as a republic, where we elect others to represent us within a governing body. True enough ... in theory. Problem is, we don't even have that anymore, assuming we ever really did. Unitary George and his cringing Congress of Democratic enablers pretty much proves this conclusively.

Democracy in name only. This is where the choreographed fiction of a Presidential election "campaign" rears its ugly, and very empty, head -- in fact, it's the very epitome of the "DINO" dilemma in which we"re all such unsuspecting captives. All candidates for public office, wherever it might be, say certain things during a campaign, tailored to the particular audience to which they're delivered. They pander, in other words. Meanwhile, they solicit and accumulate massive gobs of corporate cash to fund their various drives for power, in return for an encyclopedic collection of quid pro quos. It's a highly-evolved racket, predicated on age-old American traditions of greed and larceny, that has no real connection to the theories or conceptual underpinnings of true representative government, much less participatory democracy. How the hell can anybody who claims to understand the basic problems and dysfunction of US electoral politics -- self-styled "progressives" and "liberals" seem to believe they do -- have any measure of faith in any fully-owned product of such a comprehensively corrupt system, as all the major Presidential candidates clearly are? It's quite a puzzler, to say the least.

Well, long-winded screeds that go nowhere are certainly no answer to anything ... you might think, after all this time, I would've figured that out. Sigh. In any event, to all those Obama mamas and Hillary hipsters out there, as well as any other frothing partisan of some hack machine politician: Give it up already. No single individual, particularly a well-heeled shill crippled by corporate dollars and overwrought ambitions, is likely to have your interests in mind. Slavish devotion to these quasi-personality cults masquerading as Presidential campaigns -- it doesn’t really matter which one -- merely accelerates the process through which the warped neo-con vision of a privatized authoritarian state on the North American continent is being inexorably realized. It hastens the final dissolution of constitutional government, as we understand the term, and its ultimate replacement by a lawless corporate kleptocracy under the ham-fisted rule of telegenic demagogues and charismatic whack-jobs ...

... I wish I knew what the answer was, beyond just spewing such poisonously depressing bile right in the middle of a pleasant Saturday morning. Maybe there isn't an answer; maybe I should just order a beer and say, fuck it already. Maybe I should stop inflicting this incomprehensible brain-dribble on everybody ...

COMMENTS ARE ALWAYS GREATLY APPRECIATED ...

GORE SHOULD RUN AS AN INDEPENDENT -- PLAIN AND SIMPLE

"Pin your ear to the wisdom post ..." So sings Tom Waits, in the tune that best explicates the confounding, infuriating insanity in which our so-called individual consciousnesses are imprisoned, Get Behind The Mule. This is, naturally, a matter of opinion. And that's fine. Really, where would we be if we didn't have the foul brute of opinion out there, fucking everything up beyond all hope?

There's no need to even attempt to answer such a stupid question.

***

So here we are, stumbling and staggering amid our flummoxed flounderings, hopelessly searching for even a glimpse of the wisdom post, which will probably never happen. Not in the deathly arid intellectual environment we've allowed to be imposed on ourselves, at any rate. Anyway, for what little it's worth, here's my latest foray behind the mule, a hope-deprived toss of a few pennies into the putrid wishing-well of despair we've been tap-dancing around for the past seven (very long) years. And it is this: now that Al Gore has won the Nobel Prize, he should immediately announce his candidacy for President -- as an independent. No party machine, no DLC, no corporate compromises, just Al. What a dramatic, seismic upheaval that would cause; a gonad-tightening, sphincter-clenching paradigm shift of epic proportions. It'd almost be enough for me to actually give a shit about the debased electoral system in this sad, ridiculous country of ours.

Ah, but the discomfiting panic that would overwhelm the feeble corporate hacks at the helm of the shabbily leaking garbage scow that is the Democratic Party, in the audacious face of an independent Gore run, would surely be a sight to see. The highly entertaining turmoil that would ensue among this crime gang, these closeted neo-cons desperate to inherit Bush’s "unitary executive" mantle -- what an utterly priceless spectacle that'd be. To see Hillary's towering ambition to wield the unconstitutional powers that have been so deliberately crafted for chucklehead George go up in a puff of smoke, like the existential ass gas that it is, at least would give us something to laugh about when we're finally all transported to the nearest Halliburton-approved concentration camp. Hardy har.

But, I can hear the Kosmaniac dead-enders bleat in a horrified ejaculation of dismay, an independent run by Gore would disastrously split the Democratic vote, thereby ensuring a Republican electoral victory next year! To which I answer: so the fuck what? The Democratic "leadership" in Congress has already shown, well beyond a reasonable doubt, that they're fully on-board with the wider neo-con project -- their adamant refusal, in the face of public discontent and an enormous mountain of rather obvious criminal activity, to remove the most thoroughly corrupt administration in US history, pretty much proves this to be the case. They want all this extra-constitutional power for themselves, to replace their Republican cohorts as corporate-sponsored arbiters of the privatized death-wheel profit machine, the primary motivating engine propelling this whole catastrophic neo-con experiment. Would a President Hillary, as completely and enthusiastically in the corporate bag as any American politician has ever been, seriously consider curtailing or rolling back the abusive policies and precedents set by the present administration? You don't really believe that, do you? Come on, already.

Logic would seem to indicate that Gore doesn't owe much in the way of loyalty to the Democratic Party; after all, it was the party that foisted Lieberman on him in 2000, and has been at the forefront of the Vichyite appeasement of the neo-cons ever since. He's more than proven that he hardly needs the debilitating albatross of a compromised political apparatus strung around his neck, dragging him back down into the filth and puke -- you know, the natural habitat of the political animal. Gore has achieved heaps more than he ever could have, or did, as a captive member of a completely wasted political system. That's why he would be the perfect anti-party candidate, in a manner of speaking: he's redeemed himself about as well as any major politician ever has, is involved with issues of critical importance to the very survival of the planet and its monumentally misguided human inhabitants, and has reached a plateau of personal stature that no machine politician can hope to match. He's the one person who might be able to yank this corrupted pustule of a nation back from the brink of extinction ... so long as he doesn't run as an "official" Democrat. If he runs as a Democrat, he's owned, again. It's just that simple.

Well, you can all relax, you supercilious sniffers of Hillary's bloomers, or you moronic miscreants who actually believe that Barack Obama or John Edwards or any of the other nitwits have something important to say: Gore won't run, under apparently any circumstances. More's the pity. Instead of the one individual who might possibly save this "democratic republic" from itself -- Gore would at least try to -- we’ll probably be afflicted with Unitary Hillary and her superficially modulated version of neo-con fucktardery. So will end the buffoon epoch, the Bush period of the neo-con make-over of America, to be replaced by perhaps the far more dangerous, much less intellectually-challenged Hillary edition. Al, shorn of the useless baggage of party affiliation, is -- or would be -- the only thing standing in her way ...

Oh hell -- so much for the wisdom post. Run Al, run. You're our only hope ...

WHATEVER

Front page headline of today's Sacramento Bee: DEMS TO YIELD ON WIRETAP POWERS. The article hardly requires reading; I don't even touch corporate trash newspapers if I can avoid it. Why would I want to read about another vicious betrayal, another "off the table" rat-fucking, courtesy of the Democrats we put in control of Congress to put an end to such neo-con nonsense? How's it feel, all you Democratic partisans out there? Had enough yet? Ready to jettison your desperate, death-grip-like identification with pathetic authoritarian co-dependents like Reid and Pelosi? Are you convinced, finally, of the sheer folly of hanging your much-abused faith on a political apparatus that is thoroughly rotten to the core? How many times can you be so blatantly screwed by your Democratic saviors, and not withdraw your bizarre allegiance to them?

Yeah, I know: more rhetorical questions that serve no useful purpose. Whatever.

"Whatever" just about sums it up. Another sell-out, another nasty dry-humping by the diseased three-legged pit bull of incipient fascism ... I can already hear the wheels spinning inside the paper-thin skulls of Skinner and Kos and other Democratic Party diehards of their ilk, practicing their special brand of bandwidth-sucking monkey motion by telling us, yet again, why we MUST continue to unconditionally support the Democratic machine and elect more Democrats next year and why Hillary is better than Obama and Obama is better than Hillary and blither blather blah blah blah fucking blah ... Meanwhile, representative government in the United States continues with its spot-on and rather unearthly impersonation of the Weimar Republic, even as it ignores the brick wall that always appears at the end of such routines. The public issues a gaping yawn, the DLC laughs uproariously, and the neo-con fanatics ready the cruise missiles for launch against, oh, pick a country ...

Whatever.

AN UNEXPECTED REALITY CHECK

I've spent the last few weeks desperately attempting -- fruitlessly, pointlessly -- to ignore as much of what's going on as possible, to stop riding the wobbly see-saw of hope and despair, to unhitch Fortuna's debilitating wheel from the bent and greaseless axle of my consciousness by paying only so much attention as is absolutely necessary. I've tried to move myself even further towards the margins and fringes, not so much to garner perspective but obliviousness, to shut out what little awareness of things I might actually have. A psychic pit-stop, a mental safe-room, an extended breather from the immense psychological burden of giving a shit within a cultural milieu that prizes self-centered indifference above all else ...

Needless to say, the more I tried to ignore everything, the more it all drove me into bouts of stationary batshit panic. This useless endeavor has been an unmitigated failure -- not to mention misguided and ludicrously hypocritical as well.

Luckily (or not -- I'm not sure which), I've been rudely jolted out of my self-generated, over-excited torpor through the highly unlikely agency of what appears to be an endless troop of homeless people, purposefully rummaging around the long row of garbage cans across the street from the grimy coffee joint I happen to be sitting in. I seem to be the only caffeine junkie here who notices this interesting activity, occurring just a few feet from the front windows of this tackily hip crap hole. From the neatly-dressed executroids in their SUV's, to plain-clothes cops with guns, to the self-conscious grunge-fucks who ride up on their carefully de-engineered bicycles while smoking "organic" cigarettes (the basic clientele of this place), they're all pretending not to see the trash can people they practically have to wade through -- or drive over -- just so's they can get their desperately needed coffee fix. I watch this low-rent spectacle, and I think: What's worse, that there are so many in the "wealthiest nation on earth" who must forage through the garbage to survive, or that the people responsible for producing the trash in the first place act as if the rubbish-harvesters don't actually exist?

The irony of deriding confirmed consumerist assholes for actively ignoring the blatantly rising tide of poverty, homelessness, and all the other fun features of predatory capitalism, while at the same time complaining about how difficult it is to ignore all the grotesque ugliness myself, is not lost, which is the point of this post. In fact, "irony" is probably not the correct term -- "hypocritical stupidity" better approximates the situation here. Whatever the case, the idea that ignoring something will make it go away, whether that something be dumpster-diving street people or the neo-con appetite for destruction, is patently ridiculous and self-defeating. Leave it to group of hard-case trash pickers to dish up an unexpected reality check, to remind me that -- all the psuedo-snark and sophisticated cynicism aside -- I'm basically no better than the disconnected money-worshipping corporate fuckwad in his Escalade, righteously plowing through the paper-thin fabric of this tattered society with nary a worry or concern, or a thought about anything really. What an eye-opener.

So, for better or worse or otherwise, I'm here for the duration -- that is, until the drab and most foul neo-con era runs its course, or we're all rounded up by Blackwater goons and locked away in some Halliburton-approved dungeon, or some such combination of the two. Or something else entirely. I know full well that this hosehead blog doesn't mean anything, but so what? Trying to ignore the world as it comes apart at the seems probably doesn't mean anything either.

***

Simply as an aside: "ignore" is the root of the word "ignorance," is it not? Enough said.

BREAK TIME

Taking a breather, my friends -- I'll see y'all around. Maybe ...

THE "GOOD AMERICAN"

Half a lifetime ago -- or very nearly -- I was a faceless enlisted nobody in the United States Air Force. I was stationed in Germany at the peak of the convoluted shadow-play known as the Cold War, well before the Berlin Wall crumbled and the Soviet-run eastern bloc collapsed like the sorry house of cards it was. We worked extensively with a character-filled gaggle of German civilians, there at our little flugplatz nestled in the pleasant countryside north of Kaiserslautern, in the federal state of Rheinland-Pfalz. An interesting period, to say the least, bookended as it was by the end of World War II and (what we always thought of as) the highly unlikely re-unification of Germany, encompassing huge chunks of US and European social, political, and military history. To have played even so small an anonymous part in such an unsettling, fermented cauldron of triumphant confusion and profound transformations was, if anything, a deep privilege I'll always appreciate.

A reasonably large portion of our German friends had been born before the war, early enough, in fact, to have rather vivid recollections of the Nazi era -- a couple of them were old enough to have actually fought in the war, as teenaged conscripts. These old-timers were, in effect, biological conduits to a radically different world, living representations of a cultural/political order far beyond anything our own relatively narrow and limited experience could imagine. As such, they were boundlessly fascinating to know.

I haven't really thought about these people for years, even though it would be impossible to completely forget them: Hans Felker, missing a thumb on his left hand and who looked almost exactly like Archduke Franz Ferdinand; Heiner Ultes, the gas-passing champion of the Rhineland, if not the entire Bundesrepublik; or Kurt Kniereman, he of the Bozo the Clown hairdo and the mad, cackling lunatic laugh -- to name just a few. An unforgettable cast of wonderfully weird crazoids and reprobates, particularly from the viewpoint of a nitwit fresh from the bland suburban sterility of the Sacramento Valley, such as myself.

Herein lies some sort of point, surely. I suppose it might be this: it was exceedingly difficult, if not utterly impossible, to really imagine the Germans we worked with, or any with whom we were acquainted for that matter, as having had anything remotely to do with the thankfully extinct Nazi regime, whether as active enthusiasts or not. The great bulk of them seemed to embody the stereotypical attributes of the "good German," and we dumb chuckleheads had no basis from which to discover what was real and what wasn't. Beyond the specific peculiarities of their "German-ness," they struck us warm, good-natured people, apparently untouched and unburdened by the frightfully debilitating baggage of their nation's recent history.

***

Fast-forward to the present. There's an existential dilemma facing Americans these days not unlike that which (I would imagine) beset the Germans in the years leading up to the Third Reich. Both 21st-century Americans and post-Weimar Germans are, and were, witnesses to the systematic destruction of the political order in their respective countries, in both instances by relatively small groups of bloody-handed thugs, animated by avarice and the aberrant intoxications of power. Both regimes, the Nazi and the Bushist, were (and are) composed of fanatical devotees to the rule of force, the cynical manipulation of the populations under their hob-nailed heels, and the proposition that any half-truth or deception or outright falsehood or act of murderous violence is justified -- whether before, during, or after the fact -- so long as the selfish interests of the powerful are served thereby. The dilemma derives, on the part of the Germans, from genuinely enthusiastic, largely across-the-board participation in the criminality fostered by the government; for Americans, it's the mind-bending depth and breadth of indifference to, and passivity towards, the same basic types of lawless excesses committed by our own "leaders" in the present epoch. The result is pretty much the same: comprehensive public complicity, guilt by association.

You just know that, in a generation or two (or less, even), there'll be an entire industry devoted to promulgating the idea of the "good American"; that when the disastrously defiling neo-con hangover finally runs its course, leaving the American body politic desperately gasping like a landed flounder with a hook in its eyeball, there'll be legions of academics and pundits and animatronic blowholes of all persuasions voluminously explaining that it was all a ghastly mistake. We'll be informed, non-stop, that the advent of the neo-con era was, well, just an accident, that it really wasn't a reflection of the deep-seated flaws in our collective consumerist psyche and the socio-political constructions that give it outward form ... There was nobody here but us anti-Busheviks! ... Always did think those neo-con fucktards were crazy ...

For those of us who are truly and legitimately opposed to the repulsive banality of neo-con politics and policies, and have been from even before the beginning, how will we fit within the rickety framework of apologetics that, even now, is in the early phases of construction? Will we have a clear and distinctive voice, easily distinguishable from the opportunists, blood swillers, and generic goosesteppers who will only turn against the regime when ultimate disaster looms? Or will we be marginalized, co-opted, and/or drowned out completely by the veritable army of diseased rats who're already fleeing the rapidly sinking tub that they, themselves, were so instrumental in launching? Will the respectable, official, public image of the anti-Bush "good American" be cobbled together and manipulated by these same verminous scum, desperate to obfuscate their own not inconsiderable crimes while establishing their "democratic" and "anti-neo-con" credentials, the better to strategically position themselves to take advantage of whatever opportunities might appear in the as-yet amorphous backwash of a post-Bush United States?

In the end, actually, the only question that counts is: What do any of these rhetorical questions matter, so long as our sickeningly compromised, seriously bent, and heavily damaged democratic republic survives this dangerous far-right misadventure in something resembling one piece? My old German friends would likely agree -- sure, the larger portion of Nazi criminals escaped justice, at Nuremberg or elsewhere, and most successfully rehabilitated themselves enough to eventually become pillars of the post-war versions of the German state, both east and west; all Germans, high and low, young and old, have been broadly slathered with the taint of their own past, fairly or not, but it hasn't weighed on them all that much. In fact, they'd probably make a fairly convincing argument that anything would be a vast improvement over a fascist dictatorship and catastrophic defeat in war, even an imposed political order that quickly fell under the control of the same "nodes" of power that benefited handsomely from the Nazi regime. The trade off? No Feurher, no swastikas, no bombs falling on their cities, codified civil liberties, a form of representative government, and a reasonable amount of economic prosperity for the past sixty years or so. Not bad, if I may say so.

***

Yes, well. I'm astounded beyond belief that we, Americans one and all, are in roughly the same equivocal moral position the population of Nazi Germany found itself in, circa 1938-39. Never would I imagine that we’d have anything in common with a fascist police state that, if you recall, was only brought down after the bloodiest, most violent war in human history -- something that has permanently stuck itself on the very front edge of my consciousness. Shit, will there even be any "good Americans" when this strange neo-con dream is finally over ... ? Does it even matter?

BRIEFLY: IN PRAISE OF BEER AND BREWPUBS

One good thing about three-day weekends -- they provide your weakling chronicler here the rare opportunity of making four trips to the Rubicon Brewing Company in a mere two days, knocking back banger-and-egg breakfasts and steak sandwiches and about twenty pints of the best amber ale this side of the Mississippi River. Free wireless Internet access has allowed me to read so many blogs that I'm thoroughly sick of the whole thing, as well as being queasy and cross-eyed. Fuck, I think my liver AND aorta are both exploding ... ah, what a way to go.

Anyhow, just wanted to share a brief Who-Gives-A-Shit moment with all my brethren and compatriots out there. I think I'm gonna have to check into AA one of these days ...

THE KIND OF STORY THAT MAKES ME ASHAMED TO BE AN AIR FORCE VETERAN ...

This is exactly the sort of sick and twisted story that makes me want to dig out my Air Force Achievement and Good Conduct Medals, roll them up in my Honorable Discharge certificate and my DD form 214, and smoke them ... Ah, the age of Bush -- you just gotta love it.

Via Raw Story (what else?):

CBS: Female airman claims rape, ends up on trial herself

CBS News reported Tuesday on a current case that calls into doubt the Air Force's promise, after a scandal four years ago, of better treatment for alleged rape victims. The case is that of Airman Cassandra Hernandez, who has stated that she was raped by three fellow airmen.

Hernandez gave an exclusive interview to CBS in which she admitted having drunk "a lot" at a party before accompanying three male colleagues to a dorm room. She acknowledged that her memory of events is fuzzy, but said she definitely remembers saying "No" and trying to push the men away. The three men allege that Hernandez started taking off her clothes and that the sex which followed was consensual.

A hearing was originally set on the rape charges, but after harsh pre-trial questioning, Hernandez decided not to testify. At that point the Air Force brought lesser charges against all four airmen, citing Hernandez for underage drinking and "indecent acts." The three men accepted minor punishments, while Hernandez refused. She is now facing a court-martial and could be jailed or expelled from the Air Force. At the same time, the three men have been granted immunity in their testimony against her.

It is that outcome that has so alarmed advocates for rape victims and raised a concern that -- regardless of whether Hernandez is correct in her accusations -- the case will have a chilling effect in the future. According to the Los Angeles Times, Hernandez' attorneys have released a statement saying that "'important, relevant evidence' was denied them during discovery and that Hernandez decided not to plead to the same indecent-act charge as the three airmen because 'she was told that she was considered guilty unless she proved herself innocent.'"

"The system failed Hernandez," one of her attorneys told CBS.

EXACTLY WHAT IS IT THAT WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO PAY ATTENTION TO?

It seems that it's been all Gonzales, all the time among the vulturine bloodsuckers who constitute the corporate media (at least until the Larry Craig thing blew up); even the front page of the Sacramento Bee is pushing the story, complete with a photo of Torture Boy bravely holding back tears of shame, or constipation, or something. Not that it's particularly surprising that the "resignation" of such a morally bankrupt political flunky would top all the headlines, and give the blow-dried blow-holes on TV something to talk about -- or lie about, as the case may be -- but what always bothers me the most about these circuses is how they so comprehensively eclipse nearly everything of importance, scouring the public's not-so-robust attention span clear of any least bit of relevance, about anything. Not that that's a particularly difficult thing to do, but, whatever.

No. Several years now of felonious outrages, massive frauds, and official lying on a scale never before seen, have left me completely incapable of not trying to dissect the political reasoning behind the timing of Gonzo's removal. To my cynically jaundiced eye, that's far more critical than the mere fact of his dismissal, which was pretty much a not-very-important foregone conclusion in any event. To the coterie of crazed dystopiacs directing Bush and his artificial administration, Torture Turd Gonzales was just a politically embarrassing liability who had to go. But why now? What, pray tell, are we not supposed to be paying attention to? What is it, precisely, that must be ignored and obscured by a not-gay Republican Senator who loves a little hot airport bathroom lovin', beauty contest dorks with cottage cheese where their brains should be, and, of course, the trials and tribulations of the most corrupt Attorney General in the history of the United States ...?

Ah -- now here's something (via Raw Story):

Study: US preparing 'massive' military attack against Iran

The United States has the capacity for and may be prepared to launch without warning a massive assault on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, as well as government buildings and infrastructure, using long-range bombers and missiles, according to a new analysis.

The paper, "Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East" – written by well-respected British scholar and arms expert Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, a former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament – was exclusively provided to RAW STORY late Friday under embargo.

"We wrote the report partly as we were surprised that this sort of quite elementary analysis had not been produced by the many well resourced Institutes in the United States," wrote Plesch in an email to Raw Story on Tuesday.

Plesch and Butcher examine "what the military option might involve if it were picked up off the table and put into action" and conclude that based on open source analysis and their own assessments, the US has prepared its military for a "massive" attack against Iran, requiring little contingency planning and without a ground invasion.

Be sure to click here to read the whole thing. I can see why we're supposed to close our ears and eyes to such fun-time diversions ...

CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR ...

Torture Boy Gonzales is now free to cash out at some neocon think tank or PR company or lobbying firm, sure to escape the theoretical legal consequences of the criminality he gleefully commited on behalf of Cheney and Bush. Rumor has it that low-voltage vampire Michael "Of The Devil" Chertoff is to be proposed as the new Attorney General ... People are often asking the largely rhetorical question, How could things possibly get any worse? Well, here's your answer.

Before you bust a nut in a blinding explosion of schadenfreude at the seeming demise of Torquemada, take a trip over to Casey Lee Cobb's blog and check this out.

My oh my.

IT'S ALL SO BORING

What level of perception, what fiction or fantasy, enters into policy-making? What wild flights soar over reasonable estimates of reality? What degree of conviction or, on the contrary, conscious exaggeration is at work? Is the argument believed or is it inventive rhetoric employed to enforce a desired course of action?

--Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly

I especially like the last sentence of the quote above, particularly as our corporate media stenographers -- and self-styled pundits of all kinds -- work themselves into an anticipatory cluster-fuck frenzy ahead of the already-written foregone conclusion soon to be delivered by the so-called US "commander" in Iraq. The assumed, apparently innocent, painfully earnest conviction that there must be some sort of suspense over what Petraeus will or won't say next month is almost touching in its simplemindedness; in fact, the only doubt inherent to this ridiculously absurd theater piece lies in just how closely Petraeus sticks to the script. Dutiful quasi-politician that he is, he isn't likely to stray very far.

But then -- who the hell cares?

Seriously. Why should anybody with a functional brainstem give two tiny craps about it? We already know what the "report" will say, and just how easy it is for Cheney to get others to parrot his words -- Petraeus being, in this case, the designated sock puppet. Water-carrying hacks who whore themselves out for a few measly crumbs tossed at them from evil despotic cyborgs? How unutterably boring.

It really is boring. Infuriating, disgusting, enraging, repulsive, frustrating beyond all measure ... but boring nevertheless.

And that pretty much goes for all of the toxic pollution the neocons have incontinently dumped into the turgid life-stream of this rapidly deteriorating society: it's boring because it's so patently obvious. But, the thing to remember is that the neocon crowd and its enablers -- ruthless, defiling grifters that they are -- haven't really brought anything new to the vapid socio-political maelstrom of bullshit that, like it or not, has always been the existential foundation of this rickety screw-shack of a country. Potential is one thing; the high-sounding philosophical framework of the founding documents represents an apparently noble target to which to aspire, within the realm of statecraft and government at least, but they never have completely obscured the fundamental weakness and astounding inequities that have plagued us since day one. The neocon monkeys and their slavering minions are, if anything, fanatical students of these weaknesses and inequities, dedicated to their thorough exploitation for personal gain -- no matter the cost.

But then, I was saying something about Petraeus, wasn't I ?

Actually, there's nothing I can say about this sordid circle-jerk, this fraud superimposed on a lie overlayed on a fiction ... other than to express my dismay that so many people, of nearly all political stripes and every conceivable side of the "debate" over the Iraq catastrophe, seem to take this upcoming Cheneyist vaudeville routine so seriously. Every bloated blowhole with an opinion to offer has assigned an enormous amount of significance to what Petraeus will say, even erstwhile members of the opposition "left" -- whatever officially passes for such a thing these days. What's conveniently glossed-over or ignored or spun is the rather uncontroversial fact that it's a sham, that anything that happens to pour out of Petraeus' thin-lipped gob is only designed to keep the blood and profits flowing. What's to be gained by believing otherwise? The next illegal war is already in the works, proletarian opinions don't amount to hill of donkey shit, and the neocon "revolution" is merely a logical outgrowth of structural processes and tendencies inherent to a fatally flawed political-economic system that's not long for this world. Personally, I think it's far more prudent to consider what the proper course to take might be when the paper-thin mask of "democracy" is finally torn off and flushed away, as all indications say it must be, rather than desperately clutching onto the seamy claptrap of a compromised scumbag like Petraeus. As if anything he'll likely spout might, somehow, bring an end to the neocon wars against Iraq or the American public or the world's population as a whole.

Yes, well. Tuchman writes, Is the argument believed or is it inventive rhetoric employed to enforce a desired course of action? Perhaps she was being facetiously ironic or tongue-in-cheek, but, in any case, the answer is so obvious it's ... boring as hell.

***

Where's my bartender?

KURT-SPEAK

Staggering and stumbling through one of those periodic, anti-computer frames of mind; techno-overload, Internet indigestion. In response, I dig up one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes:

Don't give up on books. They feel so good -- their friendly heft, the sweet reluctance of their pages when you turn them with your sensitive fingertips. A large part of our brains is devoted to deciding whether what our hands are touching is good or bad for us. Any brain worth a nickel knows books are good for us.

Computers are insincere. Books are sincere.

And don't try to make yourself an extended family out of ghosts on the Internet.

-- Kurt Vonnegut, Agnes Scott College, 1999

It's way past time for an extended -- perhaps permanent -- breather from the horrors of this mechanized madness ...

TRYING NOT TO READ THE NEWSPAPER

As a general principle, I try not read newspapers, for reasons that are plainly obvious. Referencing a headline once in awhile is one thing; superficially scoping out the front pages of establishment rags like the Sacramento Bee, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, and of course the New York Times (all available in the vending machines just outside most of the coffee joints and beer holes I usually patronize), is about as far as I usually go. Yesterday morning, however, I splurged and managed to dig up fifty cents to waste on a copy of the Bee, only after an above-the-fold juxtaposition of a couple of stories caught my jaundiced and bloodshot eye.

My last two quarters gave me a soupy mixture of Jose Padilla being convicted of ... something or other, and another story of the Sacramento County District Attorney declining to prosecute a CHP lieutenant who awarded no-bid state contracts to a firm owned by his daughter and son-in-law. What do these two stories have in common? Well, nothing really, at least directly. Except, of course, they do function as the two sides of a "criminal justice" coin that's been debased and adulterated to such an extent, it hardly has anything to do with "criminal justice" any longer -- assuming it ever did.

Anyway. The Padilla case is sufficiently well known, among those paying attention, as to not need recounting here. It's enough to characterize it as the logical result of a co-called "justice" system run completely amok, political corruption settled in its gonads (and other vital organs) like heavy metals in a population exposed to depleted uranium. From what I understand -- and, naturally, I could be about as wrong as it is humanly possible to be -- the DOJ commissars never actually proved that Padilla really did anything, certainly nothing even remotely connected to the "dirty bomb" bullshit for which he was originally arrested and illegally held by the military, until his mind transmogrified itself into an especially rancid chunk of moldy roquefort. It was, from bogus beginning to pathetic end, a politically-motivated operation with a predetermined outcome; essentially it was an experiment within the wider project of eviscerating the United States Constitution, at least those sections of which that deal with "antiquated" notions of civil liberties -- you remember those things, don't you? Somebody had to be the precedent-setting sacrifice, the foredoomed rat in the diabolical neocon laboratory where the mad scientists attempt to alchemically merge the worst, most base characteristics of predatory capitalism with such fun-time concepts as Stalinism and the major tenets of National Socialism. Somebody -- in this case, Jose Padilla -- had to function as the procedural trailblazer for the rest of us, if you know what I mean.

In contrast to the Padilla case, this local tale of CHP corruption seems of little consequence. The mammoth chicaneries of, say, Halliburton and Blackwater, and other corporate monstrosities of their ilk, would seem to easily eclipse such penny-ante shenanigans as a Highway Patrol nitwit funneling the inevitable no-bid contract to his daughter. In dollar terms, that's certainly true. What's so significant to me is how the editors at the Sacramento Bee pinned this story next to the one on Padilla, actually sticking this article about low-budget CHP nepotism and thievery in the more prominent position, in the center above the fold. Clearly, they feel it's more important to emphasize how a minor public official is apparently entitled to escape criminal conflict-of-interest charges (in the words of Sacramento County DA Jan Scully: "The evidence does not show that [the CHP lieutenant] had any prohibited financial interest in any of the contracts at issue.") when a member of his family benefits from his decisions, rather than the sick story of how some poor dumb sap was railroaded into prison after being illegally held for years and having his brain turned into a rotten cucumber. A typically curious, but telling, mishmash of priorities on the part of the Bee's corporate hatchetmen.

Well, as I said, under ordinary circumstances -- whatever those might actually be anymore -- I usually avoid newspapers like a politician avoids the truth and/or his constituents. Looking at traditional conduits of news and information, such as newspapers, really has only two possible outcomes: the submersion of any and all issues into unfathomable depths of incomprehensibility, or the exposure of just enough of what's real to legitimize and solidify one's impending lunatic dissolution. That's precisely what I feel like is happening when a corporate ventriloquist's dummy such as the Sacramento Bee effectively declares that our sympathetic attentions should focus on the tribulations of an unindicted cop who broke the law, instead of a political prisoner who's merely a prototypical poster child for the right-wing dystopia-to-be. Ah, but such is the Bushworld zeitgeist, 2007.

*Sigh* Is it too early for a beer?

ACCIDENTAL FUN WITH A NEWSPAPER HEADLINE

Most unintentionally hilarious newspaper headline I've seen in ages and ages -- from the Sacramento Bee, 14 August 2007:

Void left by exit of Rove

Say what you will about McClatchy, and its flagship organ, the Bee, but every now and again they do seem to display an inexplicably oblique sense of humor. What "void" instantly springs to mind, when one gives thought-space to our chimperiffic fake president? Yes, of course, the echoingly huge void in the center of his pointed little head, particularly since his "brain" has (ostensibly) decided to take a hike. Hardy Har. I'm sure that when the McClatchy brothers founded the Sacramento Bee back in the 1850's, they hardly could've imagined it would evolve into the silly comedy rag it's apparently become.

As far as Rove is concerned -- fuck that doughy-headed, pasty-faced, amoral lump of shit, that spiritual inheritor of Josef Goebbels' special brand of creamy evilness. I guess a few people see some sort of significance in Rove's so-called "departure"; he may be removing his foul, disease-riddled bulk from the physical proximity of his ultimate creation, the Commander Guy/Decider-in-Chief, but it's ludicrous in the extreme to believe he won't still be exerting his devilish influence on the Unitary Marionette. He'll just be more deeply buried in the maggoty woodwork, that's all.

Humorous headlines aside, here's an ominous implication to Rove's rather precipitous exit: he just lost out in the overt power struggle with his co-controller, Cheney ... Now there's some food for thought. All of a sudden, I'm not laughing anymore.

CLUB NOTES -- GETTING AWAY FROM ALL THE PUKINESS, BRIEFLY

Time again for the extremely infrequent visit to Sacramento's oldest club -- opened in 1939 -- The Torch Club. Needless to say, I had to have a respite from the ugliness, the disaster that this nation has become, however briefly. So bear with me as I try to transcribe these nearly undecipherable scribblings in my beer-stained notebook ...

4:50PM. A typical scene: ten minutes before the "blues jam" is due to commence, and there's a grand total of seven people in the bar, and the four nearest are carrying on an overly-loud conversation about ... real estate. How exciting. Complementing the stupidity of it all are the well-stewed bikers who are now trickling in, wrapped in faux-leathers and carefully composed scowls; the outlaw aura is rendered slightly less convincing by their cell phones, and by the ubiquitous squinty-eyed over-concentration they display as they force their pudgy fingers to manipulate the tiny little buttons ...

5:00 PM. The "house band" should be launching their half-assed assault on the historical fundament of American blues music right about now, but so far there's only a drum set and an amplifier set up on the stage. It doesn't bode well, but then nothing ever does around here ... Four dollars for a pint of Guinness -- I find myself digging through the change in my pocket, hopelessly wondering if I have enough money left to buy another drink ... Tattoo people just walked in, so perhaps the afternoon isn't a complete wash after all.

5:05 PM. I'm disappointed to see that the bulbously curvy bartender is still sporting that stupid bobbed haircut. It's The Bicycle Thief meets T-Bone Walker in a dingy downtown club. How revolting.

5:30 PM. The bald-headed security guy just turned on the jukebox. Hmmm ... Ah yes, the harsh and beat-to-crap semi-street people have finally arrived, the Torch Club's primary clientele. The real estate buttheads are getting pretty drunk ... You've never seen so many pony tails and bald spots in one room -- I love this place.

5:50 PM. The "band" starts playing, only 50 minutes late ... somebody, anybody, please punch me in the head as hard as possible. Please! I can still hear this unconscionable affront to taste and decency. I do love this place, but I seriously wonder why I ever bother to come here. Jeeze, I can play 12-bar blues as badly as these fuckers ...

6:15 PM. To be completely honest, these guys are god-awful hacks, this bar is a funky nasty mess, the patrons have lived very hard lives ... but I haven't thought about NeoCon aggression or constitutional destruction or Presidential orders or the likelihood of being locked up in a Halliburton-constructed prison -- among other horrors -- for at least an hour. So, it's time well spent, I suppose.

6:30 PM. OK. I'm so bored I could spit. The idiots on stage are the drunkest people in the joint ... I'm done.

Well, that was fun.