Solar Flare Interferes With Chris Dodd's Crime Filter

If loose lips sink ships, then Chris Dodd, ex-senator and current MPAA CEO has certainly put his good ship Lollypop in danger of getting torpdoed. It is certainly the worst kept secret in the history of the world that politicians mold their policy positions based on who lines their coffers with treasure, but everyone who is involved damn well knows to maintain that cloak of "plausible deniability". That is, until Dodd cold lost it and spilled the beans. Now, to appreciate the gravity of this, one must sit back and consider not only the possibility of bribery charges that might possibly be leveled against Dodd himself, but where that investigation might ultimately lead, and who else might have been caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

It certainly seems the people are pissed. It took less then a day for the public to compel the White House to swing its baleful gaze toward in Dodds direction.

Stay tuned, cuz I'm thinking some serious shit is about to go down.

Seriously?!

Oh for the love of God. Please don't ever mistake me for a person who loves cats, but this is a bit on the insane side. Those who follow this blog, which I admit is pretty close to no one at this point, know I spare the rod for no one, especially Conservatives Gone Wild, but seriously, the cat? This transcends Liberal v Conservative. This is just simply some idiots who think they're helping the cause when in fact they're making fools of them.

This Thing On?!

Okay okay, I get it. Up to now for the last few years this has been a serious misallocation of valuable internet resources, and I do surely apologize for that. Truth of the matter is, I have a short attention span (oh, and a family, which let me tell you is a serious time sink) so my ability to give my complete effort and attention give a damn and take the time to research stories like a proper journalist is severely compromised. So instead of going the way of a lot of "journalists" and simply make shit up I chose to keep my mouth shut. How I've managed to do this in the face of the political goings on lately completely befuddles me, since really, this is some of the best comedy to come out of the political scene since Nixon! It really just writes itself. That being said, I've opened a Twitter account so I suppose I might actually need to, you know, get to work on some of my trademark long winded bloviating. Really shouldn't be that hard since, as I mentioned before, there's no shortage of stuff begging to be peeved. So, let's tear into a couple.

First a programming note. From this point forward, this blog WILL be making use of colorful metaphors. The English language has these words in them, and I honestly think that, when used in proper context and correctly, lend a lot to the emotion and poignancy of the written word. (As an aside, "tits" doesn't even really qualify anymore so I admit the previous hyperlink is a bit dated, but hey we at the Peeve are nothing if not nostalgic.)

On the personal side, as many of my loyal Peeve followers are aware none of you know since exactly zero people follow this blog to date, I hate people. I mean this to say, I hate a majority of people. Obviously I like some people, but these are people who have some intrinsic value to the world with their ability to think objectively and not simply absorb and regurgitate what they hear as fact without a thought to the validity or, indeed logic of it. As for the General Population in the country, people are by and large over-opinionated and woefully under-informed dolts, or worse, simply not interested in thinking for themselves. But I digress. We have an underground garage at work. This garage has a lot of spaces. I am not entitled to any of these spaces, so as such I cannot park in there during "normal business hours". I don't work normal business hours, so after hours or on the weekends, I can get in there. This is good, since it's colder then a well diggers ass outside, it's snowing and there are more people who have access to and can fuck with my car when it's outside. Anyway, there are a lot of spaces down there. When I came to work at 8 in the morning today, there was about 10 cars down there (including the one that has been abandoned there since around 2003). I park in any random space near the elevator and go about my business. At the end of the work day 9 hours later, I wander downstairs to see someone has put a sheet of notebook paper on my windshield that reads "this is a private parking space 7 days a week". It was easy to get to this thing stuck to my windshield since there WASN'T ANYONE PARKED WITHIN 3 SPACES OF MY CAR! So faced with the daunting task of having to park 4 feet over in the next space (which incidentally could have put him 4 feet CLOSER to the elevator) this fucktard instead takes the time to break out a pen and a piece of paper and write me a note. Words absolutely fail.

A few political points to make. Newt is victorious in South Carolina! That makes three candidates on top for three primaries. So basically the GOP is still completely rudderless, though this does pretty much make irrelevant Ron Pauls' and Santorums' bid. Ron Paul because there's absolutely no way the GOP will allow Ron to represent them in the general election. If by some miracle Paul became an actual threat to win, (which he won't unfortunately), he'd either be bought off (unlikely, since Paul has actual, you know, convictions and ideas about America) or suffer some unfortunate incident.

And of course, Santorum is just there for comedic value at this point. His latest moment of brilliance had him, in his typical rush to denounce anything not Christian, stating that “(equality) doesn’t come from Islam. It doesn’t come from the East and Eastern religions, where does it come from? It comes from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that’s where it comes from.”

Ummm, Dick, err excuse me, Rick? Perhaps if you're going to espouse your Christian values you should have a better grasp on the Good Book, cuz last I checked Ishmael was the first son of Abraham, and was recognized as one of the first Muslims. Thus the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is also the God of Ishmael. So those Muslims you're so phobic about? Same God. Guess you're gonna have to base your religious phobia on some other ideal.

9/11: A Day That Will Live In Infamy, But Just To Make Sure We're Going To Run Film Of It Every 30 Seconds For The Next Week

Dateline: New York. The Morning of September 11th, 2001.

Now, seriously, I challenge you to find me a person on United States soil over the age of 8 with the capacity for normal thought and recollection who can't tell me the rest of the story of that day.

Now find me a person meeting the same criteria who can accurately describe to you the events of December 7th, 1941?

And yes, thank you, I am aware of the differences in terms of target and intent, but let's consider how many MILLIONS of people lost their lives as a result of THAT event, compared to the several thousand who have thus far died as a result of the attacks in New York and Washington DC.

Now, I realize that you über-Patriot readers have stopped reading at this point and am now working over your resources to discover who I really am so you can deport me or worse, but there really is a point to be made here... I have a child at home. A young one. One who occasionally sits next to me and watches what's on the television. Is it important that he understand the history of our nation, and how we have become for better or, at the moment, horribly worse, the America we are today? Absolutely. Is it imperative that he understand that there are people out there that mean to do him harm for things he has nothing to do with? Absolutely.

Is it necessary that he see, in vivid color and high definition and Dolby Surround sound, the last seconds of life and horrifying deaths of thousands of people, recapped from various angles and super slow motion, with play by play and breakdown? No. It is unnecessary and gratuitous.

By and large, Americans in the early 1940's learned of Pearl Harbor via a headline in the newspaper with a picture of a burning ship, or radio, where the scene was described to them with enough detail to get the point across without offending anyone. People who were not at the scene of the crime were not subjected to seeing people dead or dying, yet they got the point: America was attacked, innocents died, those that were responsible must be held accountable for their actions.

Usually I'm the one to jump up and down and cry foul when someone starts complaining about sex or violence on TV. As a parent, it is my responsibility to monitor and if need be control what my child watches, and under normal circumstances this would be easily accomplished with very little effort. In this particular circumstance though, unless I'm going to watch Sprout for the next 2 weeks, the images of 09/11/01 are unavoidable.

It is important that we never forget what happened. It is unhealthy and counterproductive to relive the event every 30 minutes.

Activists are Knuckleheads

Okay, an update. These particular activists are either stupid or dumb. Watching this, they just had two of their crew jump on board another ship without permission on the high seas. To everyone else with half a brain and a very basic understanding of international law would recognize this as classic, by the book piracy.

For some reason these idiots think their crewmembers have been "kidnapped".

Jesus wept.

And the whales? Well, they're not coming to their rescue either... Apparently even they know the law.

Activists are Funny

Okay, so I saw these advertisements on TV for a program called "Whale Wars". It looked pretty cool and I'm kind of hot on these types of shows, being a fan of The Deadliest Catch and the sort so I set up my way cool recording thing-a-ma-bob to do it's thing and I am now sitting here watching it. Here is my tale on it...

Activists are, by and large, silly, misguided and self-absorbed people. So petty and self-absorbed, in fact, that apparently different activists groups fight with each other about the same things.

I'm trying to balance the extreme irritation I have for people who are so intolerant with anyone that doesn't subscribed to their viewpoints with the fascination of watching these idiots jump in front of the figurative train in an attempt to stop it though sheer will.

So far, I'm still watching.. But I am starting to get the urge to throw something through my TV screen.

It Is Done.

First off, I'd like to congratulate the American people for not fucking up two times in a row. A scant 36 hours ago, it came to pass that Barack Obama is out 44th president, and not a second too soon. If you want any indication of the kind of president Bush is and what he's done to this country, one only look at the reaction around the world to the announcement that Obama will be moving to Pennsylvania Avenue in February. Hell, even the FRENCH approved! That, my friends, is historical by itself.

Now it'll be interesting to see what happens from here... My only fear is that the American people and to some extent the people around the world have raised the bar for Obama so high that anything he does will be seen as falling short.

We shall see. These are no doubt going to be interesting times.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

I've been struggling to put into words just how to explain the tone and character of the Republican rally cry, and I've seen a disturbing trend developing. At this point in the McCain/Palin campaign, the points that they are hitting on are chiefly thinly vailed personal attacks on Obama. Rallying your populace against an unseen enemy has been tried by another politician and we all know that relying on your population's inability or unwillingness to grow their own brains can only turn out badly. We are beginning to see the fruits of our non-labor now, what with a foreign policy that is reckless at best, an economy that has, for all intents and purposes, imploded, and horrifyingly erronious misallocations of valuable military resources.

What's truly troubling is how close the race is between Obama and McCain. Here's part of the problem. People, in general, are pretty dumb. Here's a few things I've heard, unsolicited, out of people where I live here in suburban Chicago:

"Obama supports gay marriage, which means they would be teaching that to our children in school!"

"Obama is a Muslim, therefore he supports terrorism"

"Obama is a Communist"

This is the kind of stuff I've been hearing and unfortunately, for these people, there's obviously no ability to reason logically with them since apparently they're intellectually void. This is the kind of blind, mindless sheep mentality that saw Bush to a second term. As you'll recall, the battle cry in '04 was "we gotta win the war against terrorism"! Of course, no one at that point had any obvious point of reference since the mainstream news media hadn't clued in yet that Iraq had effectively nothing to do with the current domestic terrorist problem, so all they had to go by was the rhetoric from both parties, and the American people put their money on "the devil you know" spot, without any consideration for any of the other domestic problems we faced at that time. Unfortunately, the American people have only partially awakened to the notion that closing your eyes and wishing something to go away doesn't make it actually go away. The only action that seemed to make sense at the time was to move a Democratic majority to the Hill, but all that did was grind the Federal Government to a complete halt for the last 2 years. If for nothing else, at least if Obama makes it into office, SOMETHING will get done!

I've heard many times the saying "the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer". I never really appreciated what that meant until now, and what's really scary about that is that "poor" line is steadily creeping upward. Make no mistake about it. You are all witness to that quote born out in reality. For the last 6 or so years, a lot of people in the banking and loan industry have made insane amounts of money. When that chicken finally came home to roost, guess who got to foot the bill to put Humpty Dumpty back together again?

Scary, eh?