While walking down the street one day a US senator is tragically hit by a truck and dies.
His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.
"Welcome to heaven," says St. Peter. "Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we're not sure what to do with you."
"No problem, just let me in," says the man.
"Well, I'd like to, but I have orders from higher up. What we'll do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity."
"Really, I've made up my mind. I want to be in heaven," says the senator.
"I'm sorry, but we have our rules."
And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell. The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him.
Everyone is very happy and in evening dress. They run to greet him, shake his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people.
They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster, caviar, and champagne.
Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who has a good time dancing and telling jokes. They are having such a good time that before he realizes it, it is time to go.
Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises...The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on heaven where St. Peter is waiting for him.
"Now it's time to visit heaven."
So, 24 hours pass with the senator joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time and, before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.
"Well, then, you've spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now choose your eternity.
"The senator reflects for a minute, then he answers: "Well, I would never have said it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in hell.
"So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell.
Now the doors of the elevator open and he's in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage.
He sees all his friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags as more trash falls from above.
The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulder. "I don't understand," stammers the senator. "Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now there's just a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?"
The devil looks at him, smiles and says, "Yesterday we were campaigning...today you voted."
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Memories of SOTU last
Now that the smoke stains have begun to wear off your ass, tune in at 6:00 PM PST to have them touched up to almost like new…
Found posted at Crooks and Liars
Found posted at Crooks and Liars
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Another creative scam
My email box is a prime target for scammers with a suspect command of the english language. Some of them are pretty creative, like the one below, and they must be getting some response because they just keep coming. I wonder why they don't start their own Mega-Church...
Remember People...this is a scam...
Hello Dear Beloved,
Let me start by introducing myself. I am Marine Capt. Kevin Bixen of 4th Battalion, 14th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Chattanooga, currently serving in Iraq. My troops were deployed here in 2005 Iraq since the beginning of the war, though I have visited home twice since then Just last week we received an urgent call from Baghdad that some terrorists were camping there and my troops were sent there to forestall their activities.
On perceiving our presence, they first opened attack on us. There was nothing we could do rather than returning fire. We were really under heavy fire. Finally, we brought the situation under control and some of them flee, 20 were killed and we were able to arrest 11 of the alive. When I was interrogating one of them, whom I got to know was their leader, to see if he could give us more useful information. After series of intense interrogation, he led us to where they keep their weapons. I took some of my men and went there not too far from southern Baghdad here in Iraq.
When we alighted from our patrol cars, he took us straight to a deserted building where inhabitants had vacated for long because of the war. Later, he took us to a particular room inside the building where Guns (AK-47) and TNT for making Bombs were kept. I ordered my boys to search the other rooms about 5 minutes later, one of them came back and took me to one of the rooms where there were two (2) trunk boxes. I opened them and to my amazement, there were loaded with the US dollars. I was confused, I ordered him not to show or tell anybody about it and we all returned to our base.
At night of the same day, I took one of my men who found the boxes and we went back there. We found out the total sum amounted to Fifteen Million Five Hundred Thousand United States of America's currency in hundred bills. Now, I need you help to transfer this money because I want it to be in safe hands. Please confirm your interest through this email:(mkevinbixen@yahoo.fr) to enable me furnish you with all the details and for your assistance.
Please, endeavor to keep this information discrete. Don’t disclose it to anybody for security reasons and to protect my interest with the US marine force.
Kindly Get Back To Me.
Thank You and God Bless America.
Marine Capt. Kevin Bixen
Remember People...this is a scam...
Hello Dear Beloved,
Let me start by introducing myself. I am Marine Capt. Kevin Bixen of 4th Battalion, 14th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Chattanooga, currently serving in Iraq. My troops were deployed here in 2005 Iraq since the beginning of the war, though I have visited home twice since then Just last week we received an urgent call from Baghdad that some terrorists were camping there and my troops were sent there to forestall their activities.
On perceiving our presence, they first opened attack on us. There was nothing we could do rather than returning fire. We were really under heavy fire. Finally, we brought the situation under control and some of them flee, 20 were killed and we were able to arrest 11 of the alive. When I was interrogating one of them, whom I got to know was their leader, to see if he could give us more useful information. After series of intense interrogation, he led us to where they keep their weapons. I took some of my men and went there not too far from southern Baghdad here in Iraq.
When we alighted from our patrol cars, he took us straight to a deserted building where inhabitants had vacated for long because of the war. Later, he took us to a particular room inside the building where Guns (AK-47) and TNT for making Bombs were kept. I ordered my boys to search the other rooms about 5 minutes later, one of them came back and took me to one of the rooms where there were two (2) trunk boxes. I opened them and to my amazement, there were loaded with the US dollars. I was confused, I ordered him not to show or tell anybody about it and we all returned to our base.
At night of the same day, I took one of my men who found the boxes and we went back there. We found out the total sum amounted to Fifteen Million Five Hundred Thousand United States of America's currency in hundred bills. Now, I need you help to transfer this money because I want it to be in safe hands. Please confirm your interest through this email:(mkevinbixen@yahoo.fr) to enable me furnish you with all the details and for your assistance.
Please, endeavor to keep this information discrete. Don’t disclose it to anybody for security reasons and to protect my interest with the US marine force.
Kindly Get Back To Me.
Thank You and God Bless America.
Marine Capt. Kevin Bixen
Friday, January 25, 2008
Say Whaaa?
George Bush and his driver were cruising along a country road one night when all of a sudden they hit a pig, killing it instantly.
Bush told his driver to go up to the farm house and explain tothe owners what had happened.
About 1 hour later Bush sees his driver staggering back to thecar with a bottle of wine in one hand, a cigar in the other and his clothes all ripped and torn.
'What happened to you', asked Bush.
Driver said, 'Well, the Farmer gave me the wine, his wife gave me the Cigar and his 19 year old daughter made mad passionate love to me'.'
My God, what did you tell them', asks Bush.
The driver replied, 'I'm George Bush's driver, and I just killed the pig'.
Bush told his driver to go up to the farm house and explain tothe owners what had happened.
About 1 hour later Bush sees his driver staggering back to thecar with a bottle of wine in one hand, a cigar in the other and his clothes all ripped and torn.
'What happened to you', asked Bush.
Driver said, 'Well, the Farmer gave me the wine, his wife gave me the Cigar and his 19 year old daughter made mad passionate love to me'.'
My God, what did you tell them', asks Bush.
The driver replied, 'I'm George Bush's driver, and I just killed the pig'.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The woman vs. the black guy
The woman vs. the black guy
Who's more terrifying to red states, smart Hillary or savvy Barack?
The nation trembles
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
It's the question everyone seems to want to address, the imponderable and frightening and slightly insane sociopolitical phenomenon that's happening right now to such a degree that even the left is falling all over itself trying to digest and parse and comprehend it all at once, and simply can't.
It is this: Just how the hell did it come to pass and which planets finally aligned and what sort of Kool-Aid has been gulped by the universe that the two white-hot Dem frontrunners, the two brightest lights on the political spectrum for the 2008 presidential electional so just so happen to be members of the two most controversial/ least represented groups in modern uber-white ultra-patriarchal American snake-oil politics — which is to say, a smart, savvy woman and a smart, savvy black male?
It's a stunning thing to watch. Right now, the various spurts of venom aimed at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama from conservative punditsand politicos are, at best, scattershot and convulsive, with only MSNBC's Chris Matthews proving himself to be a consistent blowhard jackass in his relentless slamming of Hillary by claiming that she only made it this far due to adultery-survivor sympathy. Hey, Chris?2001 called. It wants its puerile, sexist analysis back. Thank you.
Yes indeed, the sexism that surrounds Clinton's run like a toxic fog is almost too easy to spot. (Fox News is, naturally, fueling its entire 2008 programming schedule with it.) It is de facto, built-in, implied and inherent in the coverage of just about everything she does, and what's most amazing to me is that people are still surprised that the sexism is there at all, much less so apparent and shameless.
To which I can only reply: I'm sorry, did you somehow miss the last seven years of brutal, testosterone- drunk war-sucking macho neocon hell? Did your noise-canceling headphones somehow block out the sound of those 10,000 tiny, clashing penises, banging like Satan's own baby rattle all the way from Osama's cave to the Oval Office to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad' s gay fetish dungeon in downtown Tehran?
Because truly, while a record number of women currently serve in Congress, Washington is still very much an inbred old-boy's network, so deeply entrenched in ancient male power structures and so drunk on stagnant machismo and so poisoned by the Christian right's woman-in-her- place mentality, it will require a couple more decades and a few hundred more dead southern congressmen before the innate sexism finally fades to a tolerable scar.
(Actually, at the moment, it's tough to tell which aspect the right hates more about Hillary: the fact that she's a woman or the fact that she's a Clinton. I think it's a lethal mix of both, the unconscionable right-wing double whammy, insult added to injury and all resulting in a liberal vagina monologue the misogynistic right is simply not ready to hear.)
As for Obama, well, he's not so easy. The inherent racism simmering all over Bush Nation right now over his, um, Negro-ness? Blackitude? Really good tan? (they don't know what to call it, safely) is decidedly more subtle, more insidious, less acceptable as public display than flat-out, everyday Chris Matthews-grade sexism, and therefore, not so easy to spot. Not yet, anyway.
So far, no one on the right really seems to know the best way to play the race card against Obama. Not that they won't try. Will they go after the drug thing? Paint him as a friend to scary hip-hop thug rappers? Resort to saying 'Obama' and 'Osama' in the same sentence so as to confuse the same red state knuckle-draggers who still believe Saddam orchestrated 9/11? Hard to tell. But rest assured, they'll finda way.
Or, you know, maybe they won't. After all, the right has its own heaping bucket of problems right now, not the least of which is the weakest and craziest and least palatable field of GOP contenders in 50 years. There's the chipper creationist nutball who loves him some Chuck Norris, the stupefied Mormon mannequin who simply cannot believe the world is so icky and complicated, the doddering Iraq-loving war vet who seems to be getting more unstable by the minute, and the cross-dressing former New York mayor who has "9/11" tattooed on his ego in fake blood. And oh yes, a zany old anti-choice libertarian who somehow keeps raising piles of cash and sending fascinating postcards from the edge of political reason. Cool!
Perhaps this is the best news of all. The right is a fractured, inchoate mess, with the once Karl Rove-unified evangelical core now gloriously splintered and disillusioned and completely unsure where to turn to find a candidate who will hate gays and slam women's rights and mistrust foreigners as much as Bush promised, but never completely delivered. They can't yet attack Obama because they're too busy destroying themselves.
But I'm most amazed/amused at the one big question that keeps hovering over the media and infiltrating the political blogs — does all this excitement over Hillary and Barack mean the nation is finally readyfor a female president? A black president? Have we, at long last, come so far that a guy like John Edwards, an excellent, likable, all-around candidate and a classic populist southern Democrat, actually finishes third?
The answer, I'm afraid, is no, we are not ready. Not by a long shot. This is the big, astounding myth. See, "ready" would imply we've more or less eliminated the sexism and at least come to terms with the racism, and therefore neither is much of a factor in the slightest. It's a bit like asking if America is finally ready to rid itself ofits toxic love of guns and strips malls and numb Christian groupthink.In other words, if you have to ask, we ain't.
However, we do seem to be at this weird flash point, a privileged moment in political history where the anti-Bush recoil has become so potent and the right-wing collapse is so profound and the women/youth vote (at least at the moment) seems so invigorated that it all might coalesce just right and catapult a woman or a black male into the presidency, despite the hardcore misogyny and racism built like a cancer into the framework of this nation. Hey, stranger things have happened.
Look at it this way: Much in the same way Bush whored Sept. 11 to drag the nation to its lowest emotional, fiscal and political point in 100years, so could the new wave of enraged, inspired voters leverage the Bush nightmare itself to bounce us as far as possible in the other direction. Hell, it could be even weirder than that: Hillary or Obama wins the nomination, chooses the other as running mate. Talk about your perfect liberal storm.
Are we ready for it? Doesn't matter. Quit asking what amounts to a dispiriting, futile question, and let's go find out.
Who's more terrifying to red states, smart Hillary or savvy Barack?
The nation trembles
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
It's the question everyone seems to want to address, the imponderable and frightening and slightly insane sociopolitical phenomenon that's happening right now to such a degree that even the left is falling all over itself trying to digest and parse and comprehend it all at once, and simply can't.
It is this: Just how the hell did it come to pass and which planets finally aligned and what sort of Kool-Aid has been gulped by the universe that the two white-hot Dem frontrunners, the two brightest lights on the political spectrum for the 2008 presidential electional so just so happen to be members of the two most controversial/ least represented groups in modern uber-white ultra-patriarchal American snake-oil politics — which is to say, a smart, savvy woman and a smart, savvy black male?
It's a stunning thing to watch. Right now, the various spurts of venom aimed at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama from conservative punditsand politicos are, at best, scattershot and convulsive, with only MSNBC's Chris Matthews proving himself to be a consistent blowhard jackass in his relentless slamming of Hillary by claiming that she only made it this far due to adultery-survivor sympathy. Hey, Chris?2001 called. It wants its puerile, sexist analysis back. Thank you.
Yes indeed, the sexism that surrounds Clinton's run like a toxic fog is almost too easy to spot. (Fox News is, naturally, fueling its entire 2008 programming schedule with it.) It is de facto, built-in, implied and inherent in the coverage of just about everything she does, and what's most amazing to me is that people are still surprised that the sexism is there at all, much less so apparent and shameless.
To which I can only reply: I'm sorry, did you somehow miss the last seven years of brutal, testosterone- drunk war-sucking macho neocon hell? Did your noise-canceling headphones somehow block out the sound of those 10,000 tiny, clashing penises, banging like Satan's own baby rattle all the way from Osama's cave to the Oval Office to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad' s gay fetish dungeon in downtown Tehran?
Because truly, while a record number of women currently serve in Congress, Washington is still very much an inbred old-boy's network, so deeply entrenched in ancient male power structures and so drunk on stagnant machismo and so poisoned by the Christian right's woman-in-her- place mentality, it will require a couple more decades and a few hundred more dead southern congressmen before the innate sexism finally fades to a tolerable scar.
(Actually, at the moment, it's tough to tell which aspect the right hates more about Hillary: the fact that she's a woman or the fact that she's a Clinton. I think it's a lethal mix of both, the unconscionable right-wing double whammy, insult added to injury and all resulting in a liberal vagina monologue the misogynistic right is simply not ready to hear.)
As for Obama, well, he's not so easy. The inherent racism simmering all over Bush Nation right now over his, um, Negro-ness? Blackitude? Really good tan? (they don't know what to call it, safely) is decidedly more subtle, more insidious, less acceptable as public display than flat-out, everyday Chris Matthews-grade sexism, and therefore, not so easy to spot. Not yet, anyway.
So far, no one on the right really seems to know the best way to play the race card against Obama. Not that they won't try. Will they go after the drug thing? Paint him as a friend to scary hip-hop thug rappers? Resort to saying 'Obama' and 'Osama' in the same sentence so as to confuse the same red state knuckle-draggers who still believe Saddam orchestrated 9/11? Hard to tell. But rest assured, they'll finda way.
Or, you know, maybe they won't. After all, the right has its own heaping bucket of problems right now, not the least of which is the weakest and craziest and least palatable field of GOP contenders in 50 years. There's the chipper creationist nutball who loves him some Chuck Norris, the stupefied Mormon mannequin who simply cannot believe the world is so icky and complicated, the doddering Iraq-loving war vet who seems to be getting more unstable by the minute, and the cross-dressing former New York mayor who has "9/11" tattooed on his ego in fake blood. And oh yes, a zany old anti-choice libertarian who somehow keeps raising piles of cash and sending fascinating postcards from the edge of political reason. Cool!
Perhaps this is the best news of all. The right is a fractured, inchoate mess, with the once Karl Rove-unified evangelical core now gloriously splintered and disillusioned and completely unsure where to turn to find a candidate who will hate gays and slam women's rights and mistrust foreigners as much as Bush promised, but never completely delivered. They can't yet attack Obama because they're too busy destroying themselves.
But I'm most amazed/amused at the one big question that keeps hovering over the media and infiltrating the political blogs — does all this excitement over Hillary and Barack mean the nation is finally readyfor a female president? A black president? Have we, at long last, come so far that a guy like John Edwards, an excellent, likable, all-around candidate and a classic populist southern Democrat, actually finishes third?
The answer, I'm afraid, is no, we are not ready. Not by a long shot. This is the big, astounding myth. See, "ready" would imply we've more or less eliminated the sexism and at least come to terms with the racism, and therefore neither is much of a factor in the slightest. It's a bit like asking if America is finally ready to rid itself ofits toxic love of guns and strips malls and numb Christian groupthink.In other words, if you have to ask, we ain't.
However, we do seem to be at this weird flash point, a privileged moment in political history where the anti-Bush recoil has become so potent and the right-wing collapse is so profound and the women/youth vote (at least at the moment) seems so invigorated that it all might coalesce just right and catapult a woman or a black male into the presidency, despite the hardcore misogyny and racism built like a cancer into the framework of this nation. Hey, stranger things have happened.
Look at it this way: Much in the same way Bush whored Sept. 11 to drag the nation to its lowest emotional, fiscal and political point in 100years, so could the new wave of enraged, inspired voters leverage the Bush nightmare itself to bounce us as far as possible in the other direction. Hell, it could be even weirder than that: Hillary or Obama wins the nomination, chooses the other as running mate. Talk about your perfect liberal storm.
Are we ready for it? Doesn't matter. Quit asking what amounts to a dispiriting, futile question, and let's go find out.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
The Iowa Caucus
Integrity and fairness are not qualities easily found in the election process these days. Since the Supreme Court give-away in 2000, a number of people have dedicated their lives to exposing the corruption that drives the Republican victories.
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