Nobel peace prize... wait, what?

So... why exactly did Obama win the Nobel Peace prize? I'm confused - isn't it a prize for peace?

Obama is not a peaceful president. He's following the Bush administration's withdrawal for Iraq, almost to the letter ('out' by 2011 - except for massive military bases, troops in the 'green zone' ... in all, 35,000 "residual" troops are to remain after 2011... and that's not counting the 100,000 or so mercenaries - private military contractors, if you prefer - currently operating in the country, most of which will remain). He's escalated the Afghanistan war drastically, making it far bloodier than it already was - including an increase in predator drone attacks in Pakistan - which always kills more civilians that Taliban forces.

He hasn't even closed Guantanamo bay like he promised. He has not ended the practice of torture - he has merely outsourced it to other countries via CIA extraordinary rendition.

Peace? What peace? He hasn't done a damn thing in the pursuit of peace. Dropping bombs makes a pretty lousy foundation for a peaceful future.

I would say that the Nobel Peace Prize is now officially a joke, but... 2 years ago they gave one to Al Gore for his propagandistic "An Inconvenient Truth." In 1973 they gave one to Henry Kissinger - a man who's foreign policy influence lead the the deaths of millions of people all over southeast Asia as well as other parts of the world.

No, the peace prize has been a joke for awhile. This just shows, once again, that it is something to be ignored.

Under only one definition could this peace prize recipient be considered worthy. In the words of George Orwell: War is Peace.

The most underrated band of the decade...

...is autolux. See? You have not idea who they are. Who they are is amazing. What they do is rock and roll that is nigh unto perfection. A little bit post-grunge. A little experimental. Pure rock and roll, baby. Carrying the torch of Hendrix, vowing never to make the same album twice (unlike so many other so-called artists in the current american music scene)





(Every strange sound in below song was made by a guitar - not a synth)









(this song is amazing live - notice how the drummer drums with one hand while tweaking the drum machine...)


See them live - it's only 15-20 dollars (for now, they might get big when their 2nd album is released after New Years), and it's the best live show I've ever seen - I shit you not.

The Kennedy Name: Better than a lottery ticket

Before you start bitching...hear me out....


Ted Kennedy is dead. All respect.

Ok. Ted Kennedy was a heel. He was an adulterer. An alcoholic. A murderer.

His front door into public service was a 1962 special election for the seat left vacant by his WILDLY popular brother John F. Kennedy. Have you heard of him? He was president for awhile.

After JFK's death in 1963, Teddy was re-elected in 1964 to a full six year term in the senate (a feat he would accomplish SIX more times). Uh yeah, duh. What heartless bastard/bitch is going to vote OUT the brother of the beloved assassinated president??

So, coattails successfully ridden, Ted began his career in politics.
But following the terrible shooting death of his brother Robert Kennedy in 1968 it was clear that Teddy had become unhinged. See he was really close with Bobby and HIS death left him the sole male heir to the entire Kennedy legacy.

It's really no shock that the following year Teddy was driving home from a party with a young lady (uh, he was married and his wife was pregnant, by the way) and oops! SOMEHOW he drove off a bridge and into the water....

Teddy survived...the girl did not.
More shocking is that he fled the scene and eventually pled guilty to manslaughter. And escaped any jail time, by the way.

First of all, show me the senator today who could drive a young girl into a lake, flee the scene, plead guilty to manslaughter and STILL get re-elected.
Yeah...show me....ain't happening.

Hell, the press nowadays EXCORIATES politicians who cheat on their wives, or dare to touch a shoe to another shoe in a men's bathroom, etc etc.

I can only surmise that it was a combination of the Kennedy name and the willingness of the press of the past to "cover" for men of prominence that successfully swept Mary Jo under the rug for Teddy.


Of course I realize that we all have past indiscretions and we all have made mistakes and that those past mistakes shouldn't define our lives, but seriously?
He drove a girl off a bridge to her death and fled the scene!

It boggles the mind that he was EVER re-elected at all. I'm actually surprised that he was cocky enough to make that 1980 run for the presidency. Seriously?

He was also present during the alleged rape perpetrated allegedly by his nephew William Kennedy Smith.

He was a known womanizer throughout the '80s following his divorce, getting photographed in compromising positions and carousing with other members of Congress, allegedy harassing young women....

And just a few days ago he passed away. Sad, sure. But the coverage he is getting is not befitting the sort of man he was.
He was a drunk, an adulterer, a boorish loudmouth.

The sort of coverage he's getting now is preposterous.

So he served in the senate for 40+ years. So he was the brother to a beloved fallen president. So you recognize his name. He was still morally bereft. The youngest child of a family of privilege, a Richie Rich of sorts. Had either Jack or Bobby survived, would Ted even BE a person of note or just another sad footnote in the Kennedy family history.

Legacy forced a square peg into a round hole, and now we're expected to celebrate the life of a man who was not worthy of celebration.

So he was a Kennedy.

That doesn't make Ted Kennedy worthy of ANY of this media sanctification. Frankly, it all makes me sick.

Sex Ed for 5 Year Olds.

WOW. What a great idea. The U.N. is ran by idiots.

Death Panels! Oh Noes!

Ok, seriously, I'm sick of hearing about the evils of public health care. What's worse? A public or a private death panel? What is an insurance company but a private death panel? Every time a claim is made, they run a cost-benefit analysis. If a client makes a claim and they are in a demographic unlikely/unable to sue, the claim is denied even if the policy provides coverage for whatever the ailment may be (my brother, for example, has been denied coverage for a doctor visit before - they claimed pneumonia was a preexisting condition). Honestly, the way our medical system works, we'd probably be better off with witch doctors.

Now, like every other person in this intellect-forsaken country, I have not read the bill (1,000 pages of legalese? I'll pass... for now. If I hear a reliable source talk about death panels... I'll read it then). So... death panels? I can't refute them. But I can mock them. Seriously, if Obama wanted to kill off the weaklings of our society, would he really choose health care as his Modus operandi? It doesn't make sense. On two levels: A) Why would he want to kill millions of Americans (that seems to be the assessment of the fearful)? B) Assuming Obama wanted to kill millions of Americans, why would he use a slow beurocratic method (the much hyped death panel)? Why not use, say, an engineered disease against which only he and his buddies/cronies/corporate masters are immunized? Why not use a NAZI-style police state crackdown? Seriously, there are a hundred methods of killing people in mass that are more effective (and cheaper) than... death panels. My point: if a fascist state were to kill you, they most likely wouldn't bother evaluating your health status before doing so.

Relax, people. Socialized medicine isn't a harbinger of the apocalypse. The coverage may be good. It may suck. But hey, for tens of millions of uninsured people, it will be an option that they haven't had before. Even a bad option is better than no option.

D-Wade, Michael Crabtree and Sports Players' Egos.

Michael Crabtree has recently told the media he would rather be drafted again next year than play this year for the San Fransisco 49ers at a salary lower than higher draft pick Darrius Heyward-Bey.

Wow, great idea Mr. Crabtree, sir. Who's going to draft you next year? And if they do, you suppose it will be higher than number 10?

On another note, Dwayne Wade will not negotiate another contract with his team Miami Heat until he sees some personnel moves that will make the team a playoff contender.

As if building a championship contender takes one year Mr. Wade. (The Celtics of 07-08 are an exception, and they are grossly over the NBA luxury tax.)

Here's some advice to both players. Mr. Wade, negotiate. Mr. Crabtree, go to camp. You are no bigger than the team. You are a distraction to your teams.

We are sick of your whining, and personally, I would punch you both in the face if I saw you.

Musical Interlude...

So apparently no one has anything to write about on this blog at the moment. Myself included. So, for listening pleasure, a musical mashup with elements of Beck, The Doors, Beastie Boys, Nine Inch Nails, and... about 6 more artists. Friend of mine made this - it's pretty kickass.

No Logo

No Logo, based on the best-selling book by Canadian journalist and activist Naomi Klein, reveals the reasons behind the backlash against the increasing economic and cultural reach of multinational companies. Analyzing how brands like Nike, The Gap, and Tommy Hilfiger became revered symbols worldwide, Klein argues that globalization is a process whereby corporations discovered that profits lay not in making products (outsourced to low-wage workers in developing countries), but in creating branded identities people adopt in their lifestyles.

Using hundreds of media examples, No Logo shows how the commercial takeover of public space, destruction of consumer choice, and replacement of real jobs with temporary work - the dynamics of corporate globalization - impact everyone, everywhere. It also draws attention to the democratic resistance arising globally to challenge the hegemony of brands.

No Logo helps explain why we live in a world where people pay money to turn themselves into walking billboards for whatever company they find to be cool. Why the corporation seems more powerful (or at least more relevant) than government.

A quote from the 1978 movie Network (Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay) comes to mind: "Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those *are* the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale."

Corporations are the modern empire. Some are even starting their own Colonies (Disney has a private town - Celebration, Florida).

"That's it, that's all I've got to say. See you in court."

Unable to give comments here (I do not understand why, but I enter it in, and it doesn't show up, whether I leave it with my account or anonymous or anything else), I must give kudos to the rant below. While there is a difference between conservative and liberal policies in theory, in action it ends up being more of the same.

Really, there aren't many differences worth considering between Obama and Bush. Tax policies. Favoring one war over another. Different reasons for the restriction of liberty.

The war on terror is a war on personal freedoms more than it is a war on any other nation.

Rant rant rant.

Anyway, that rant below made me think of this rant, from the movie Waking Life. I think Alex Jones is a crackpot... but sometimes, like right here, he is spot on. And entertaining.

Rant Wednesday

This is my first time posting to this blog, so I thought I'd do it with a bit of oomph. This means I'll just be throwing the gauntlet out there by bluntly stating (yes, I went there) my opinions. Today, I want to talk to you about politics, particularly politics in America, although it really applies to any modern government. And how completely damn useless they are.

First point: it's not only distracting, it's downright destructive to label one's self as one or the other: conservative or liberal. This leads to such pathetically didactic thinking that we end up drawing lines in the sand between ourselves and people whose only crime was to wind up on one side of a completely arbitrary line, an imaginary distinction, when really no real individual falls completely into the hard-liner camp of either side. It's fictitious, no more representative of an individual's core personality or beliefs than the lines that split West from East Germany. Over here, you're a capitalist. Over there, you're a communist. Let's build a wall. All it's doing is distracting us from the real dichotomy: master and slave.

Politics in America are designed to make a person feel helpless. The best tool the ruling class has for subverting the populace is the impression that nothing we do can change the way things are. Any system in which someone without a high school education counts as much as someone with several doctorates is fundamentally flawed. It's the reason Greeks feared democracy: it's just mob rule. The ignorant masses pick the best demagogue, the one who makes the best empty promises and preys on their most simple-minded fears. There's small comfort in knowing that the puppet you pick doesn't matter. They are both operated by the same hand.

Many Americans don't vote, and for good reason: the Electoral College makes sure that most votes really don't count. I've never heard an argument for the continued existence of this system, and yet it stands. Not that it matters which of the two options they give us eventually wins. We get our chance to pick a puppet ruler every few years, but it doesn't change the basic direction of the country. Those decisions are made by a controlling power far from the will of the populace.

They say that at system of government derives its power from the consent of the governed. This is tripe. Utter horsecrap. No one ever asked me if I'm down with the system. I never consented to anything. But what happens if I say no? Can I just install a wind turbine, dig a well, and declare my independence? Can I even move to a tiny island somewhere and rule over its population of three orangutans? Of course not. I'm stuck like a rat in a maze with no cheese. All I can choose is my preferred shape of maze. And, in my book, anyone with no say in the course of his fate is a slave.

Because that's really all it comes down to. Tools of control. Reality television, popular music, Flash video games, high speed internet. They're all ways to keep us occupied. Bread and gladiators to keep us from seeing the truth. We pick out our designer shackles at name brand stores.

Maybe this is why I prefer the thought of a monarchy. At least I'd know who's in charge, and I could understand the interests they're serving. And I would much rather trust someone who marries his cousin and wears a funny hat than a ruling conglomeration of the military-industrial complex.

The saddest thing is that this changes nothing. No matter how much I rant and rave, my teeth lock in with all the other gears, and the machine continues to turn.

I'm not always this incoherent. It's just a rant. Shh, it's okay.