Week of 01/28/2013

Rupert Murdoch’s War Spenders
– by David Matthews 2

Rupert Murdoch has a dangerous spending problem on his hands.

No, I don’t mean him personally.  But certainly the people that work for his flagship cable news channel, Fox News, have this problem.  We are talking about not only their regular “anchors”, but also their “contributors”, those so-called “correspondents” and “consultants” that get in front of the camera to whine about how the White House isn’t doing what they want.  And what compounds this is that they are engaging in this dangerous problem not only with a wanton abandon, but they operate on the belief that they are above any kind of accountability for it.

This problem is two-fold so I hope the conservatives and neo-conservatives are able to follow along with this libertarian, especially since this involves more than a bunch of carefully-selected ten-second sound-clips and bumper-sticker slogans.

First we have the conservative and neo-conservative bloodlust for war.  The rest of the world may have moved past 9/11 and the people behind it are either captured or are dead, but that traumatic event still lives on day-in and day-out in the fascistic fear-mongering minds of the conservatives and neo-conservatives, especially seen and heard on Fox News and conservative talk radio.

Fox News personalities see enemies under every rock and in every crevice and in every shady spot, and they seemingly cannot wait to wage war at the drop of a burqa… or even a sombrero.  It wasn’t that long ago that the Fox News media personalities were ready for the United States to wage war against Mexico, using banners and taglines promoting “The Third War” and “The War With Mexico”.  They were eager to see us send troops to the US-Mexico border, at the very least to enact a Berlin-style wall around the border, if not to enact some perverse and antiquated revenge for The Alamo. 

Of course we don’t hear too much about that “war” until the subject of immigration comes up.

Then we have al Qaeda, the “Cobra” to the Fox News “G.I. Joes”; a ruthless terrorist organization determined to “rule the world” (of course).  Fox News personalities and their friends in the conservative and neo-conservative circles see al Qaeda agents everywhere.  They see al Qaeda flying in pregnant mothers so they can give birth to “Americanized terrorists”.  They call to question the patriotism of any American citizen that doesn’t automatically salute the flag (made in China) or recite the Pledge of Allegiance (created by a self-described “Christian Communist”) like they do or have the supposedly “required” American Flag pin (also made in China) firmly affixed on their lapels.  If you’re not marching to Captain America’s cadence, then you’re supposedly an al Qaeda sympathizer. 

Okay, rampant McCarthyism is one thing.  What’s worse is that Fox News personalities then believe that they can dictate America’s foreign policy based on it.

Following the hypocritical mistakes of the Cold War, Fox News personalities spend time advocating that the United States prop-up and otherwise support abusive autocrats over calls for freedom from the masses for fear that (1) those autocrats are our “needed allies in the War on Terror” and (2) those masses crying for freedom and a more-democratic form of government are really nothing more than dupes of Cobra… I mean al Qaeda… that are just looking to create more Iran-style theocracies.

We actually saw this with the turmoil in Egypt.  The people there demanded an end to the endless “State of Emergency” that had existed for years that gave the Egyptian president unlimited power.  But despite their calls for a more democratic-style of governing, Fox News personalities were telling their viewers to not trust the Egyptian protesters.  That those protesters were just being led by Islamists, and that they want to take out our supposedly “valued ally in the War on Terror” to put in a theocracy that would help out Cobra… I mean al Qaeda… in their global campaign to “rule the world” (of course).

Think about it: we had an opportunity to help mold Egypt into a country similar to the vision we claim to champion with our supposed doctrine of “American Exceptionalism”, but the pervasive fear of Cobra… I mean al Qaeda… demanded that we condemn the protesters and support the abusive autocrat.  So when a new faction took over, should it be any surprise that the new leadership would be Islamic?  We turned our backs on the Egyptians when they needed support in their push for freedom, simply because it didn’t fit in with the Fox News mindset of “with us or against us”, so they ended up with an Islamist leadership to fulfill the Fox News prophecy.  If you ever wanted to know what happened to that circular logic we called the “doctrine of American Exceptionalism”, all you have to do is look at how we mishandled the Arab Spring movement.

And it’s not just Egypt.  We’re seeing the same mindset being employed by Fox News personalities when it comes to Libya and Syria.  Those “calls for freedom” are really supposedly “calls for Islamic theocracies”.  We couldn’t support the overthrow of Libya’s government because they were our “valued ally in the War on Terror”… even though this was the same country and leadership that sponsored terrorism in the 1980’s.  And we are indecisive on Syria because both sides supposedly are being aided by Cobra… I mean al Qaeda… and somehow any action will piss off our precious Israeli allies.  We support the dictator and Iran uses them to attack Israel.  We support the masses and they create an Islamic theocracy that supports Cobra… I mean al Qaeda… and they attack Israel.  Either way we piss off our precious Israeli allies.  (And don’t get me started on that either!  That’s a subject for another time.)

Even ending the wars we’re already fighting are considered nothing short of “surrenders” by the Fox News personalities.  There is no such thing as an “ending” in the Fox News war policy.  They will drag out a whole platoon of former military officers that now make their money sitting in cushy think-tank organizations as so-called “experts” that will proclaim that any kind of troop drawback will be perceived as a “retreat” by Cobra… I mean al Qaeda… and will only encourage them to re-double their efforts.  We could be in those countries for a thousand years and the Fox News war policy will never change.  They will drag out some grizzled war-wacky former officer that will mumble about the continued threat by Cobra… I mean al Qaeda… and how we shouldn’t supposedly “abandon our forces”.

And that brings us to the other insulting shoe that hurled at our collective heads by the Fox News personalities: the cost of this perpetual war policy.

Wars cost money.  Every war that we wage costs money, even if we don’t fire a single shot.  As a matter of historical fact, war has been the single-largest expense on the American economy.  This is the very reason why America’s Constitutional authors made sure that the House of Representatives has both the power to declare war and the responsibility of setting up the budget.  And, traditionally, our elected grifters and shysters found a way to finance our wars.

So… pop quiz: how did we pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Here’s the answer they don’t want you to know: we didn’t. 

Not only were the cost of these wars tacked onto the ever-growing federal debt, but we weren’t even allowed to know how much they cost for seven years.  Out of sight, out of mind.  How much those wars cost the United States was considered a matter of “national security” and kept out of public discussion until Barack Obama became President and he decided to take it out of the closet. 

And then, all of a sudden, the Fox News personalities declared Obama to be at fault for that debt, as if he personally spent all of that money just days into his presidential tenure!

Added to that is this sudden concern about the debt from the very conservatives and neo-conservatives that said absolutely nothing about either the cost of war or that it was kept out of sight and out of mind for seven years when their people were in charge of Washington!  “Oh, wait, how did those trillions of dollars in red ink end up on the federal books?  We didn’t see these things before Obama took office, so it must be his fault!”

When Obama took office, the conservatives and neo-conservatives changed tactics and suddenly became “aware” of how much money was being spent on everything.  The same party that pushed for a blank check for war and for Homeland Security and for any other “war” they wanted waged now wants to micro-manage every dime, nickel, penny, and half-penny raised and spent.  “Austerity” is their new battle-cry, and their three-part solution to everything is tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts for anyone that can afford a K-Street lobbyist.

Now I’d like to believe their theory that tax cuts produce economic growth, but we have over ten years of experience that says otherwise; especially since “profits-at-all-cost” has become the end-all-be-all for the business world instead of sustainability.  So the correlation between tax cuts and economic growth is nothing more than a political myth already busted by reality.

Put deficit whining and tax cut-fetishists together and you have a bunch of fiscal slash-and-burn tapeworms, looking for any program to scavenge that doesn’t hurt them or their friends.  That’s bad enough to deal with. 

But then add that to the perpetual war policy championed by the Fox News media personalities of war anywhere, everywhere, for any reason and at any cost, and what do you have?

Well let’s get brutally honest here… what we have are a bunch of blood-lusting hypocritical war-spenders that are looking for the next fight to get their “fix” and feel entitled to spend any amount of taxpayer money to feel “strong” while criticizing any other kind of spending as being “wasteful”.

This is the human equivalent of slowly cutting off any kind of household money for food, utilities, mortgage, and clothes and instead spending every penny one has on shotguns, ammunition, and guard dogs.  Then, on top of that, assert one’s right to walk up and down the neighborhood with a shotgun and guard dog at all times of the day and night in the name of “Neighborhood Watch”, and picking fights with anyone that thinks that this person shouldn’t be the “best neighbor ever”.

This is the mindset that drove Italy under Benito Mussolini into ruin.  This is the mindset that broke the old Soviet Union.  This is the very mindset that has driven North Korea into a nihilistic policy of perpetual antagonism at the expense of their own people.  This is the mindset that we see on Fox News and hear on talk radio day-in and day-out and try to sell us as the American way of life.  Perpetual war at all costs.  War at any time, any place, for any reason, against any one, and at any expense.  A never-ending series of bloodshed and ego-driven posturing as we financially hemorrhage ourselves into oblivion.

And keep in mind that the champions of this perpetual and all-consuming war policy have absolutely nothing to lose in the campaign.  The war-wacky former officers won’t be the ones fighting the various wars that come from this war-spending policy.  They’ll be sitting in their cushy think-tank offices dreaming up new enemies to fight and the excuses needed to fight them.  They don’t have to worry about figuring out how to pay for these new battlefronts and for all of the other battles they drag us into that we cannot back out of for fear it would “give the wrong message to our enemies”.

Likewise, the media personalities in Fox News and conservative talk radio risk absolutely nothing in their push for all-war all-the-time.  They’re not the ones that wage the war, and they don’t have to deal with the political or financial consequences of that war.  They can shovel out pure propaganda, foster an evangelical extremist mindset of “with us or against us”, and, best of all for them, generate fear and terror among the masses… which keeps the masses not only docile, but also addicted to the ones feeding them the steady diet of fear and terror.  And as long as they are focusing on the supposedly “wasteful” spending programs of their political opponents down to the last dime, nickel, penny, and half-penny, they don’t have to explain how they will pay for their own personal pork programs… namely war.

This is what makes the war-spenders dangerous.  They risk nothing but stand to gain everything they could ever want.  Money, power, control, and the undying adulation of being seen as the smartest people in the room.

We’ve been tricked before by the war-spenders.  The Spanish-American War was probably the best example of this.  Our predecessors in the late 19^th Century were manipulated by a media mogul hungry for blood money for his newspaper conglomerate.  But unlike our predecessors from over a century before, today’s war-spenders are oozing with rampant hypocrisy, complaining about money and deficit spending while at the same time demanding we put their pet wars on universal credit.

I don’t see Mister Murdoch and the other owners of the various conservative media services stepping forward to fund these wars of their choosing.  They would much rather have their media proxies blame the current White House occupant for the rampant spending of his predecessor and scream bloody murder over any discussion of finding ways to pay for the wars they themselves want waged.

The media personalities whine about “moochers” and “takers” addicted to government programs, and yet they champion and push for a government-run war policy that takes more than just money.  At the very least they should obligated to answer the question they love to ask others: how will you pay for your folly?  If they cannot answer that question and live up to their own standards of fiscal responsibility, then Murdoch’s war-spenders need to be removed from the discussion.

Week of 12/10/2012

The 2012 Brutally Honest Awards
– by David Matthews 2

Yes, it’s December.  The year is just about over with, and it’s time to wrap things up for 2012 with the Brutally Honest Awards.

The Biggest Winners of 2012: President Barack Obama and the Status Quo – It’s a no-brainer here.  From sustaining Obama’s healthcare reform screwjob in the courts to the grand finale of the 2012 Presidential Morass, both Obama and the status quo have come out victorious.  Big Oil got away with the Deepwater Horizon spill.  Too Big To Fail got away with their criminal activities.  Big Insurance got away with their huge con job on the American people – thanks in no small part to the U.S. Supreme Court.  And Obama was re-elected to the White House thanks in no small part to…

The Biggest Losers of 2012: The GOP, Willard “Mitt” Romney, Conservatives, Neo-Conservatives, the so-called “Tea Party” people, talk radio, and Fox News – For a bunch of people that claimed to be all about heritage, they really failed Political History 101, didn’t they?  They failed to learn the lessons of John Kerry and Bob Dole, so they ended up repeating them. 

It’s not entirely their fault, of course.  They could only work with the nominee they were given in the primaries.  But it didn’t help that the party bosses decided they needed to prune the number of contenders even before a single primary ballot was cast.  If they didn’t hold so many debates or didn’t have so many “straw polls” to try to predict who would eventually win (which, by the way, were proven wrong), maybe they would have ended up with a better nominee.  But more on that later on…

The “We Won’t Miss You” Award for 2012: Todd Akin, Alan West, and Richard Mourdock – These guys were their own worst enemies. 

Akin was probably the worst of the three, though, because he sits on the Congressional committee that oversees scientists, and he pulls one of the worst cockamamie anti-intellectual statements in the world regarding human female biology, and then doubles-down and says that he got it from a doctor that apparently cannot tell the difference between a human female and a duck female.  How appropriate that these kinds of people are known as “Quacks”!

The “We Won’t Miss You” Runner-Up for 2012: Joseph Lieberman – The whiney little manipulator thought that he could control the Senate by pretending to be in the middle, when in fact he was a tool for the neo-cons.  And now that he’s leaving, he’s whining that he regrets criticizing Obama in the 2008 GOP Convention while still claiming he’s the best thing the Democrats ever had.  Hey Joe, did it ever occur to you that maybe you just being at the GOP convention would be enough of a stab in the back of your supposedly beloved Democrats?  You went from being that party’s running mate in 2000 to the GOP’s celebrity politician eight years later.  Did you think that such a Romney-style flip-flop would go unnoticed?  I have more respect of the late Arlen Specter than I do for you, Joe, because at least he was honest about his shifting support.

The “Just Go Already” Award for 2012: Neal Boortz – Once upon a time, Atlanta’s radio loudmouth traded in his integrity for Bush Talking Points and exclusive White House lunches with other talk radio personalities.  Since then, the only good thing that he did was to announce his retirement at the end of the year.  While I will miss the old libertarian version of him, I will certainly not miss the bitter neo-con sell-out sphincter that he turned into these last few years.

The McCarthy-Cohen Award for Red-Scaring in 2012: Congressman Alan West – West thought that he could resurrect McCarthyism for the 21^st Century with his claim that he had “a list” of supposedly admitted members of the “Communist Party”.  A little reminder, Congressman:  Joe McCarthy was a fear-mongering fraud that turned Americans into paranoid fascists.  When he was finally disgraced and censured for the damage he caused to the nation, to the point where he began to question the very Armed Forces he was once a member of, he did the only good thing… he drank himself to death. 

Did you get that Congressman?  The man you emulated with your “Hate-The-Democrats” crusade died a miserable dishonorable self-loathing drunk!  Is it any wonder why your own constituents voted you out of office last month?

The “Rot In Hell” Award for 2012: Andrew Breitbart – He destroyed careers without a care in the world.  Thankfully the fates and forces of the universe decided that they had enough of him.  Sadly, though, his death was not treated in the same venomous way as he lived it by those that were hurt the most by his actions.  Once again the criminals get off easy with death.

The “Bigger Man” Award for 2012: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie – When Super-Mega-Storm-of-Doom Sandy hit New Jersey, Governor Christie stopped being a politician and acted like a state leader.  He deserves to be commended for doing that, especially since it was just a week before the General Election.

The “Why Can’t We Be Rid Of Them” Award for 2012: Karl “Turd Blossom” Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi – Rove’s Fox News meltdown on Election Night, sadly, will not spell the end of his career, either as a SuperPAC consultant or as a so-called “political consultant” for the media.  And if you want to know why, then all you have to do is look at someone like Rush Limbaugh. 

Limbaugh recklessly and needlessly trashed the reputation of Sandra Fluke concerning congressional testimony she was invited to give but was not allowed to present because of GOP manipulations.  In other words, she was – at the time – a private citizen, which means the “public figure exemption” would not apply.  Why he wasn’t immediately sued for defamation still boggles the mind.  It would really be the only way he would be held to account for his actions.  The controversy surrounding Glenn Beck proved that economic boycotts do not work as a way to control media personalities.

Holder has proven that the screwjobs will continue against America.  Big Corporate and “Too Big To Fail” will continue to run roughshod across the America with no accountability whatsoever as long as they give out economic “pocket change” for compensation.

As for Congresswoman Pelosi, obviously we cannot control the voters in her district (contrary to the GOP script), but her continual delusion that she’s “doing something” in Congress as House Minority Leader will continue to hurt the Democrats and the American people by extension.  You know, I may criticize former Speaker Newt Gingrich for a lot of things, but the one thing that he did right was when he set a goal in 1998 and he failed to meet that goal, he actually stepped down.  The fact that Pelosi doesn’t have the courage to do that this time around is proof enough that she is only doing this country a disservice.

The Lamest Excuse For Failure Award for 2012: Dick Morris – So former Clinton hired-gun-turned-Fox-News-hired-gun is one of many that predicted that Mitt Romney would win by a landslide.  But then he turns around and he says that he KNEW that Romney wasn’t going to win by a landslide but he supposedly felt “obligated” to make that prediction anyway because of… morale!

No, I’m not kidding.  That’s his explanation.  “I spoke about what I believed, and I think that there was a period of time when the Romney campaign was falling apart, people were not optimistic, nobody thought there was a chance of victory. And I felt that it was my duty at that point to go out and say what I said. And at the time that I said it, I believe I was right.”

There you have it, folks.  Dick Morris spins a lie about a landslide victory just so the Romney camp could feel good about themselves.

There’s a double reason why you’re called “Dick”, Dick.  The first is who you are, Dick; and the second is what you are, Dick!

The “Why Haven’t You Packed Yet” Award for 2012: Rush Limbaugh – Limbaugh supposedly made a promise that if Obama’s healthcare reform program passed and was enacted that he would leave the country.  Guess what?  It did and he didn’t.  Surprised?  Why?

Come to think of it…

The Most Overused Childish Threat for 2012 That Needs To Die A Painful Death: Leaving The Country- The people that make that kind of asinine promise never follow through with it!  Ever!  The people that actually leave the country for political reasons are the ones that don’t threaten to do it; they just do it.  The ones that just threaten to do it will later invent some explanation as to why they have to renege on it.

There is an easy way to fix this: If you’re a radio syndicator or a network producer or a newspaper publisher, you need to make it clear that if your “talent” makes that kind of promise of leaving the country, that it is your responsibility to help them follow through with it.  You let them know that their office will be vacated, their parking lot space given up, their final check cut, a limo ready to take them to the airport, and that you would wish them well in whatever country they end up in.  All it takes is for one of these overpaid loudmouths to actually be held to their promise for this “threat” to be eliminated.

The Most Sickening Realization of the 2012 Presidential Morass: Obama Could Have Been Beaten! – Obama is not perfect.  He was far from being the kind of President that America needs.  He did some things right, but he and his people also had far too many mistakes and misfires.  The reason why he won had less to do with anything that he did and a whole lot more to do with who ended up running against him.

If the GOP had backed a more credible candidate, such as Gary Johnson, then Obama would probably have been voted out of office this past November.  Instead, the party bosses tossed Johnson away before a single primary or caucus vote could be cast.

Now think about this: all of the settlements and deals that have been made from this summer right up until now could have all been different if someone like Johnson ended up as the GOP nominee.  If there was actual pressure for Obama to be the kind of president that he claimed to be for the sake of his re-election, then you can bet your last penny that he probably would have cracked the whip on his people to not screw the nation over as they have this past summer and fall.

But because the political bosses of a flawed party backed a flawed candidate, there was no real pressure for Obama’s people to do right by the nation.  They didn’t have to work to be “better than” the GOP… they just had to be seen as “not as bad as” the GOP.

That’s something that should keep you up at night no matter who you supported.

The Most Asinine “Need To Learn Pain” Group for 2012: The Secessionists – It’s one thing to lose the 2012 Morass and be bitter about it.  It’s another thing entirely to lose and then throw temper tantrums about losing and scream to want to take “your state” and leave the United States.

If you are one of those people that signed those secession petitions, then I don’t ever want to hear from you ever again about the subject of patriotism and the “glory” of the United States of America.  Ever!  You have forfeited your claim to any kind of national fidelity when you signed those petitions!

And if anyone else in the Brutally Honest community agrees with me, then I hope you’ll get in the faces of these secessionists about it and help put them in their place.  You do not tell other Americans “love it or leave it” and then turn around and say “I hate you, it’s time for a secession!”  That kind of hypocrisy should never go unchallenged!

The Most Asinine Supreme Court Decision for 2012: Forced Insurance As A “Tax” – The justices of the Supreme Court split a legal hair so fine that they almost needed an electron microscope.  I’m not surprised that they would sustain Obama’s healthcare reform program, because their mission in life is to sustain the status quo, but I do not agree with the rationalization they gave to fulfill that mission.  Calling it a “tax” does not change the fact that the government is still forcing people to get insurance whether they can afford it or not.

By the way, I don’t buy the notion that a Romney victory would have resulted in the law’s repeal.  I would speculate that he’d invent some kind of excuse to justify keeping it around.  Remember that Romney’s own “reform program” in Massachusetts was supposedly the blueprint that Obama used for his.  Do you really think that he’d be willing to do anything to change that if left to his own devices?  The man who flip-flopped more times than John Kerry?

The “My Political Kung-Fu Is Stronger” Award for 2012: The GOP’s “War on Women” – For a party that tried to deny they were waging political war on women while allowing their extremists to trash women and women’s issues, they certainly shouldn’t be surprised to see their efforts go for naught come Election Day.

The “Cr@p Or Get Off The Pot” Award for 2012: The so-called “Tea Party” – It is high time that the people that call themselves the “Tea Party” crowd stop lying to themselves and stop lying to others and to admit to the world that they are really nothing more than an extremist wing of the GOP and a part of the very problem that they claim they want to fix.

Here’s a little hint: if you continually support nothing but GOP candidates, even GOP candidates like Mitt Romney who initially make your stomach churn in disgust, then you are not independents!  You are frauds and hacks!  And worse yet, you don’t even want to accept the reality that you’re being played by the very people you claim to hate!

Visit the library, you “tea party” fraudsters, and look up the Know-Nothing Party.  Everything they did over a century ago, you’ve been doing the complete opposite; and then you wonder why the GOP ends up with people like Mitt Romney on the ballot.  You’re not the so-called “silent majority”.  That group is a myth concocted by the late Richard Nixon to give the illusion of support where there was little.  You are neither “silent” nor the “majority”, and it is time for you to either own up to your GOP masters and dissolve or else form that “third party” that you constantly threaten to do.

The “Screw The System” Award for 2012: Senator-Elect Elizabeth Warren – This is “Too Big To Fail’s” worst nightmare!  She exposed the scam of TARP.  She pushed for and got the Consumer Protection Agency, and even when Wall Street and the GOP screwed her out of being the permanent director of that agency, she’s now taken over Scott Brown’s seat in the U.S. Senate.  And “Too Big To Fail” is now deathly afraid that she’ll end up on the very Senate committee that overlooks their activities!  I hope she gets that committee assignment, and I hope she puts the screws to “Too Big To Fail” like they were Gitmo detainees!

The Best Movie of 2012: Marvel’s “The Avengers” – This is a no-brainer.  Yes the movie had plot holes and was a bit slow at times, but once it got moving, only one word could be used to describe the action: Epic!

Unfortunately the success also set the bar pretty high for other superhero movies.  Marvel now has to keep the energy going with “Iron Man 3” and the other movies in preparation for “Avengers 2” in 2015.  DC, meanwhile, has to follow through with the end of the “Dark Knight” trilogy, meet the high expectations with “The Man Of Steel”, and then keep the excitement going to their own production of “Justice League” in 2015.  Not an easy task given DC’s hit-and-miss record, but theoretically they could pull it off. 

Then again, theoretically, I could win the lottery tomorrow.

The Best New Hero Series of 2012: CW’s “Arrow” – After last year’s super-fail of “Smallville’s” finale, there was a lot of talk about the new series featuring Green Arrow.  Some thought it would be a spin-off of “Smallville”.  Others thought it would be the hero-in-jail “Super Max” idea that continually got floated about.  A lot of people thought “Arrow” would suck as bad as “Smallville” did in its last seasons.  Surprisingly, the first few episodes worked!  It certainly beat out all expectations that I had about it.  And it also warranted its own “Hero Corner” review on TGWTG.

The Saddest Day and Time of 2012: December 1^st, 2012, 02:59:59 (Eastern Standard Time) – The precise time and day when the City of Heroes MMO officially shut down.

The Worst Corporate Decision of 2012: NCSoft Shutting Down “City Of Heroes” – There really was no reason for NCSoft to do what they did to City of Heroes.  No reason at all!  It was bringing in steady income, it had an insanely-loyal user-base, it provided its own advertising through its users, and it was making money with the pay-for-features.  In other words, it was surviving.  Then again, the more that people learn about the Korean-based corporation and how it manages MMO games, the more that we discover that they really have no sense of running an international business.

The Worst Television Decision of 2012: Cartoon Network suddenly shelving the “DC Nation” programming block – Again, no reason whatsoever for Cartoon Network to do this.  None!  Especially when it’s done without any kind of notice prior to its schedule airtime and then making an off-handed comment about it six hours later.  No, it is not acceptable.  Even the people that produced the various shows in question were not told of this decision.  The people responsible for this asinine decision need to be fired!

The Second-Worst Television Decision of 2012: Ending “CSI: Miami” – There was no reason for CBS to do this.  None whatsoever!  (This is starting to be a pattern, isn’t it?)  It was a good series with plenty of neon color to attract the HDTV crowd. 

To the network programmers: may your dreams be filled with Horatio Caine dispensing “Miami Justice”.

The “How Desperate Are You Really” Award for 2012: Playboy founder Hugh Hefner – For those that don’t know, Hef is going to get married on New Year’s Eve to the same woman that broke off the wedding last year.

No, I’m not making this up.  I wish I were.  And I’m pretty sure that Hef’s accountants wished this was a joke as well, because the last time around it cost him a quarter-of-a-million dollars.

Hef, I know it’s hard finding that certain someone.  Viagra and money help.  But take it from someone who has never had a girlfriend in all his forty-six years of existence and has known nothing but heartbreak, disappointment, and betrayal: it doesn’t get better the second-time around.  It only gets worse.  And I really don’t think there’s a pre-nup agreement in the world that can overcome that.

The Celebrity That Really Needs To Take A Break: Lindsay Lohan – Ms. Lohan, you have problems.  While I appreciated your appearance in Playboy, the stories that have appeared since makes one wonder if you’ve really cleaned up your act since incarceration.

The Reality Show That Really Needs To Be Erased From All Our Collective Memories: “Honey Boo-Boo” – “Toddlers and Tiaras” was bad enough!

The ShockNet Radio Show That Deserves More Attention in 2013: “Hard Luck Chuck’s Juke Joint” – Dr. Charles Doswell, aka “2Buck Chuck”, aka “Hard Luck Chuck”, really created a very innovative straight-up look at the blues this year that needs two things: more listeners, and more airtime.  Hopefully there will be both for 2013.

The Most Appropriate Saying for 2012: The New GOP Philosophy -
It’s only “right” when it’s done by them.
It’s only “wrong” when it’s done to them.

And finally…

The Greatest Insult To Whole The Human Race in 2012: The Sickening Wave of Anti-Intellectualism – When you have a representative to a presidential contender boast that their campaign “will not be dictated by fact-checkers”, when you have politicians overseeing science grants openly calling science the work of the devil, when you have a dominant political party and its supporters fabricating history to justify their own abuses, you don’t just have a party full of people with a serious psychological problem.  You have a political faction – specifically the conservatives and neo-conservatives – that is embracing fascism for their own political gains.

Yes, anti-intellectualism is a key sign of fascism.  Look it up.  Use that brain of yours to do something other than to turn on Fox News!

Let’s get brutally honest here… when facts and truth are considered political biases to be rejected or else negated by some fictional and fraudulent claim of “the other side does it too”, we’re not just insulting ourselves, our political affiliations, or even our nation.  We’re insulting countless years of social and biological progress!  We’re telling the people that spend their time learning and studying and earning positions of intellectual respect that they don’t matter anymore!  We’re telling those intellectual people that we would rather listen to some overpaid self-important tabloid hack that claims that Christianity is “not a religion” in order to justify it being given preferential treatment over any other religion. 

“Shooting for the stars” used to mean going to the Moon.  Today it means going on “American Idol” or becoming a YouTube sensation.  We spent two hours glued to our televisions watching a man ride a balloon all the way to the edge of space and then skydive down safely, and then later in that same week complain about wasting money on education and wonder why we teach evolution instead of religious dogma.  We’re told that we’re lagging behind the rest of the industrialized world in terms of what we know and how we care for each other, and the GOP script tells us that we should dismiss what the rest of the world thinks of us, get the hell out of the United Nations, and pump more money into military spending so we can protect the world from those “radical extremists” that aren’t Christians.

Oh but don’t worry about those things.  It’s time to worry about whether or not we’re going to go over a fiscal cliff of the GOP’s own creation.  That and whether or not we would exceed a spending ceiling also of the GOP’s own creation.  And worrying about whether Christmas would be “cancelled” in a war of Fox News’ own creation. 

Oh, and we’re not supposed to worry about those things either, right?  Because the world is supposed to come to an end on the 21^st according to the Mayan doomsday people.

Well if we’re still around after that, and the economy doesn’t automatically implode after the New Year, we’ll be back here in January with round two of the Obama White House so we can start playing these petty little games again.  Happy Holidays, screw you Bill O’Reilly, and we’ll be at it again in 2013.

Week of 12/03/2012

What is Microsoft Doing?
– by David Matthews 2

When it comes to Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system, I have one simple question…

Why?

That one question encompasses a whole bunch of other questions such as… Why now?  Why shove us into a new operating system that abandons pretty much everything we’ve been taught to adapt to with Windows 7?  Why should we care about upgrading?  What is it about Windows 8 that will make us want to abandon what we’ve been doing with the previous versions of Windows?

Instead of getting answers, we get slick mindless ads for their “Surface” tablets.  We hear about “live tiles” on the Windows cellphones.  We watch a little girl painting stuff that eventually gets printed up and posted on a bedroom wall while she talks to her father via Skype.  We see people dancing and prancing and doing acrobatics and pretending to be cool.

What is not being sold is why current Windows users should upgrade or even be excited about Windows 8.

There are many reasons why the push for Windows 8 at this time is just plain wrong, with timing being the first reason why.

It was only three years since Windows 7 came out, which was supposed to be better than Windows Vista, which was supposed to be better than Windows XP and Windows XP Media Center Edition.  And now that people are getting used to Windows 7, we’re being told that we now have to completely scrap everything we know about Windows and embrace the new “Live Tiles” concept with the big ugly boxes that you’re supposed to scroll on through with a flick of a finger… if the ads are to be believed.  (For the record, I’ve tried it.  It’s not to be believed.)

So people that have gotten used to XP get barely used to Vista, get shoved Windows 7 down their throats, and then three years later are told to scrap all of that for Windows 8.  Why?  Because some slick advertising campaign featuring leaping lunatics says it’s “cool”?

Timing also plays a key role when it comes to the business user… and that’s supposed to be important because Microsoft has always been known as the company that favors businesses with programs like the Microsoft Office suite.  Corporations do not embrace sudden change like Microsoft does, especially when that change affects their own operations.

I’ll give you an example: suppose you’re in a company that uses a specific proprietary program to function.  This program has worked for all the previous operating systems without too much difficulty… until Windows 7 comes along.  Windows 7 has a different kind of authentication security that doesn’t recognize the certificate from previous versions.  This means that your long-running proprietary program that your business relies on as part of its economic survival no longer works for computers that are running on Windows 7.  That company will not upgrade their computers if those computers cannot use that proprietary program.  It will destroy their company.  So now the company’s IT department have to find a way to either craft a new authentication certificate to recognize that proprietary program, or they have to completely redesign their proprietary program specifically for Windows 7 and then thoroughly test this program to make sure that it works.  All of that takes time.  We are talking months; not hours or days.  And now, while the IT people are still trying to get their company’s proprietary programs to work on Windows 7, here comes Windows 8.

There are companies that still use earlier operating systems for that very reason, and they are not going to rush to upgrade to anything that endangers their own operations.  That is a business fact of life that Microsoft needs to accept if they still want the business crowd.

Money is another reason why this is a bad time to shove a new operating system down our collective gullets.  America is still trying to get out of the Great Recession, something that our own government refuses to acknowledge is still going on, and that means that a lot of people don’t have the money to replace all of their computers just so they can use that new operating system.

Upgrade, you say?  That depends on whether or not their computer can handle it.  Here’s a hint: if your computer is still running on Windows XP, then it will not handle Windows 8 without spending a lot of money on hardware upgrades. 

Another established fact of life is that every new operating system requires more and more resources from that computer.  More hard drive space, more RAM, faster CPU speeds, and updated drivers for all of those peripherals, and not all of those things are readily available.  If Intel or NVidia or AVG decide to sunset a certain graphics card, then there will be no new drivers for that card.  In many cases, it would be cheaper to simply buy a new computer than to upgrade the one that you have, and if money is an issue, then neither option is viable.

This is why a lot of people are still using old computers with Windows XP or Vista on them.  Being stuck in the Great Recession means having to make do with what you have, and to hell with Moore’s Law.

Speaking of security, one of the new complaints about Windows 8 is that many of the major gaming companies are finding themselves shut out from all of the techno-pop celebrations.  If you play Worlds of Warcraft or Diablo 3, for instance, the developers of those programs have said that Windows 8 is a “catastrophe”.

Time for a little history lesson.  Remember when Bill Gates ran Microsoft in the 1990’s?  One of the things that he did that set Microsoft apart from Apple was that he pretty much handed out certifications to whoever wanted to develop programs for Windows.  Good programs, bad programs, mindless games, office applications, financial software, publishing aids, it didn’t matter.  It was far easier to develop those programs for Windows that it did for Apple, and that allowed Windows to become the dominant operating system.  You could walk into any computer store and find rows after rows of Windows programs, and then you’d be lucky if you saw only one rack set aside for programs designed for Apple.  Apple set their own bar too high to be competitive.

Now fast-forward to today: if you’re an online gamer and you’re being told by the developers of your favorite MMO that they cannot support your favorite program being used on Windows 8, do you really think that you’re going to be in a rush to upgrade your computer to that new operating system?  I didn’t think so.  Especially if you’re spending money on a regular subscription to that game.  All of the leaping lunatics dancing to techno-pop music will not change that fact.

Bear in mind that I understand where Microsoft is going with Windows 8.  I do.  Let’s get brutally honest here… Microsoft is trying to develop a sense of portability, just like Apple.  They want to be able to have your PC, tablet, cellphone, and Xbox game system all connected, so you can do common functions like check your email or watch a movie or play a game anywhere from any device.  So you can take a picture with your cellphone and send it to your other applications, or order a movie through Netflix on Xbox and then watch it on your tablet or cellphone.  That’s what the whole business with “Cloud” was about a few years ago; they’re just taking those things to the next step.

But just because I understand where they are going, that doesn’t mean that I agree with the method.  Windows 8 essentially turns your computer and tablet PC into glorified cellphones.  This is especially the case with the new cellphone-like applications that Windows 8 users will be able to acquire.

One may even argue that Windows 8 could be used to eliminate the personal computer altogether, since the operating system is designed to be used primarily by the touch-screen interfaces seen in tablet PCs and cellphones, instead of the traditional hands-off monitors and mouse-cursor peripherals of the desktop PCs.  One only has to look at the computer stores pushing laptops instead of desktop computers to see where the trend is heading.  I would hope that this is not the case, though, as there is still a use for the personal computer for the end-user.

The executives at Microsoft need to understand that they did not become the 800-pound gorilla that they are now by trying to be like Apple.  They became the major corporation that they are now because they reached out and encouraged development.  They didn’t shove things down our throats and told us to simply accept it. 

In other words, they out-did Apple by not behaving like Apple.

Week of 11/26/2012

GOP Come Claim Your Junk!
– by David Matthews 2

There comes a time in every campaign for a certain chore to be undertaken that nobody wants to have done, but someone still has to do it.

It’s the time after the ballots have been counted, after the speeches have been made, and after the losers have grudgingly conceded and the winners graciously accepted the decision of the voters.  It’s the time when someone has to sweep up the confetti, pick up the balloons, clean the hotels of used prophylactics, repair the room damage, and pick up all of those signs that were plastered both legally and illegally all over the area.  

That last part is the hardest, of course.  Nobody wants to pick up their junk, especially after their candidate lost.  Losing is bad enough; now you have to pick up all of the reminders of that loss. 

But it still has to be done.

Of course, when it comes to the GOP, they’ve left a lot more than just a few political signs.  They’ve left a good part of their campaign garbage just laying around for the rest of us to stumble over. 

Here are a few instances…

Spoilsport Business Tantrums – Bad enough that GOP nominee Mitt Romney helped to orchestrate a business campaign to intimidate employees in direct violation of Title 18 Section 594 of federal law, but after the election those same business leaders began throwing childish temper tantrums about all of the supposed million and billions and trillions of jobs that they “would have created” if Romney won, but now they supposedly won’t.

Of course I don’t expect any of them to be frog-marched off to jail by our Attorney General for breaking the law.  AG Eric Holder doesn’t frog-march corporate criminals into custody… he strikes deals with them.  But their “Going Galt” attitude that has now become a spoiled tantrum certainly shows who the real villains of the Great Recession are.  (And for you cons and neo-cons out there that still don’t get it… here a hint: go find a mirror.)

Karl Rove – I was one of the few people that cautioned about writing off the so-called “Architect” following his abysmal failure as a political forecaster.  He was far from being the only one that made a shoot-the-moon “landslide victory” prediction, but he certainly was the best example of an unchecked ego in sore need of a comeuppance. 

What makes Rove’s case worse is that in addition to his job as a “political consultant” for Fox News and the talk radio circuits, he’s also got his own SuperPAC, which is pretty much like finding out that the local weatherman is also the owner of an umbrella store.  Bear in mind this is the same supposed “fair and balanced” news organization that condemns people for simply donating money to a SuperPAC (i.e. Bill Maher) and here they are putting the owner of one such SuperPAC on their payroll as a “political contributor”.

Where is the accountability, guys?  You’re supposed to be all about “responsibility” and “accountability” and “keeping people honest”.  You don’t want your viewers to presume that it’s all just a huge con job, do you?

Fear-Mongering Conspiracy Nutcases –There are people that still believe to this day that not only did President Barack Obama not present a birth certificate, but they are now claiming that “nobody … has seen an actual physical copy of his birth certificate.”  Apparently “nobody” includes the current and previous directors of Hawaii’s Department of Health, from where both the long and short versions of the birth certificate came from and were made available at Obama’s request.

Oh, but if you think the “Birther” issue was resolved a while ago, think again, because these questionably competent people have expanded their tinfoil conspiracy theory to include school transcripts.  High school transcripts, college transcripts, elementary school transcripts, admissions forms, scholarship forms, the Columbia Record Club application forms… no matter how mundane, not matter how inconsequential, no matter how asinine the request, they want it, and if they can’t get it immediately then it’s all part of that same “conspiracy”.

And they firmly believe that at some point they will find what they are looking for and it would be enough to have Obama removed from office.  All because their fragile narcissistic egos refuse to acknowledge that they are on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of humanity.  

Even the people that believe that the 9/11 Terrorist Attack was an “inside job” are saying that these “Birther” people are crazy!  That in and of itself should be the final word, but obviously it’s not because crazy and stupid know no limits.

What’s worse is that these guys have been bolstered not only by talk radio and Fox News, but also by folks like Donald Trump and his Twitter talk of “Revolution” and Ted Nugent and his promise that he’ll either be in jail or dead if Obama is re-elected.  Mister Trump, I hope you keep your recent public antics in mind when people stop worshiping your self-branded ego and your ego-centered so-called “reality” television program. 

And Mister Nugent… “dead or in jail by this time next year” you say?  Sound an awfully lot like those terrorists that you love to hate.  Maybe you ought to take a trip over to Oklahoma City and stand where I stood, where the Alfred P. Murrah building once existed, and see the handiwork of someone who thought just like you almost twenty years ago.  You may have heard of him, Mister Nugent.  His name was Tim McVeigh.  He believed the same things you do now.  And he got both jail and death for his actions.  Go ahead, Mister Nugent, pay that reflecting pool a visit and stare out at the 168 empty chairs, including the 19 small chairs, that represented the people that were killed because of that very mindset, and try to spread that kind of message there.

“Harmless” you may say?  A 57-year old police officer in Jacksonville, Florida, recently said that he’d be willing to assassinate the President.  Yeah, “harmless” like Lee Harvey Oswald was “harmless”.  Like John Hinkley was “harmless”.  They’re all “harmless” until the tragedy happens.

Then there’s…

Mitt Romney – Remember what Senator John McCain did after he lost in 2008?  Remember what Senator John Kerry did after he lost in 2004?  Remember what former Vice President Al Gore did after he lost in 2000?  Remember what former Senator Bob Dole did after he lost in 1996?  Remember what Michael Dukakis did after he lost in 1988?  Remember what former Vice President Walter Mondale did after he lost in 1984?  They all went away, Governor.  They took the loss and they went away.  There was no public whining about fictional “gifts” and trying to rationalize that loss by marginalizing the very voters you once sucked up to.  They just accepted the loss for what it was and then they went away.  Some came back, some didn’t, but they all first went away.

And now, Governor, it’s time that you did the same.  You lost; just like all of your predecessors lost.  You’re not the first, you won’t be the last, and you won’t even be memorable.  You’ll just be a footnote for future political commentators like myself to reference when the situation calls for it.

But the worst has to be…

The Secessionists – Just when we thought Romeny’s Spoiled One-Percenters were bitter and petty with their tantrums, these guys come along and make the Business Whiners look tame.

Someone got it into their warped heads that if they can’t win the election that they were going to take “their states” and leave the United States.  So they’re using one of Obama’s online petition programs to launch what could be called their “Declaration of Secession”.

Note the arrogant self-righteous presumption that they are speaking on behalf of you and me when they demand that “their” states be allowed to secede from the United States.  Note their utter disdain for our American system when it doesn’t specifically work in the way that they want it to.  And note their pompous selfishness – not to mention laziness – in their demands that “the country” leave them instead of the other way around, which is what they’ve been demanding of others for years now.  When they win the election it’s “America: Love it or Leave it”, but if they lose the election it’s “America: Leave me I hate you!”

If there is any kind of justice in this universe, these secessionists would be publicly shamed and reminded of their secession request at every opportunity.  Every time they flew Old Glory, every time they commented on some politician not showing “enough” signs of patriotism, every time they attend a July Fourth parade, every time they sing the national anthem or recite the Pledge of Allegiance, they should be reminded loudly and publicly that they spit on that very nation when they demanded that “their state” leave the United States simply because “their candidate” lost the election.

Let’s get brutally honest here… ultimately all of these things are in the lap of the GOP.  All of these things were done under their banner and done for their cause.  They were the ones that created the “anything goes” and “do whatever it takes” atmosphere that encouraged these people to do what they are doing now.  Each of these people – Nugent, Trump, the Secessionists, the Birthers, the Tantrum 500’s – they all operated with the idea that a member of the GOP would be President, and when denied that goal of a GOP Presidency, they are now carrying out revenge on America.  You had might as well stamp the GOP elephant right on each of their foreheads.

I’m sure the counter-argument would be made that in some twisted alternate universe the Democrats would do the same thing if their people lost the election.  But they didn’t lose the election.  The GOP lost the Presidential Election.  That is reality, and it is high time that the GOP bosses and members dealt with that. 

These incidents are an embarrassment to the GOP, to our political system, to the process set up by our predecessors by which we select leaders and representatives, and it is an embarrassment to America in general.  It is high time that the GOP do the right thing, step up, and clean up their campaign garbage.  It has already begun to reek.

Week of 11/19/2012

Puerto Rico 51?  Make It Happen Quick!
– by David Matthews 2

Something strange happened while we Americans were wasting six billion dollars to sustain the status quo…

The citizens of Puerto Rico decided they wanted to be a full-blown member of the United States of America!

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has been a territory of the United States since the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898.  Its people became American citizens in 1917, enjoying some of the rights and freedoms as any other American but with a few notable exceptions.  They cannot vote for a U.S. President or Vice-President, even though they have a say in the primaries and caucuses.  They only have “shadow representation” in Congress.  They aren’t really covered under the U.S. Constitution because they’re not a state, but they also are not a sovereign nation.  They get Social Security and Medicare, but they don’t pay federal taxes.

It is a political and administrative “grey area” that they’re in… and, the thing is, the voters have wanted this for decades!

For years, the citizens of Puerto Rico were given a choice as to whether or not they wanted change.  They could choose statehood, independence, or continue with their Commonwealth status.  Since 1968, the citizens of Puerto Rico voted overwhelmingly to continue with their Commonwealth status.  They voted again in 1993 and 1998 with similar results.

But not this year.

This year was different.  This year they had a two-part referendum.

Question One: Do you want to continue with the current status?

Question Two: Do you prefer Statehood, a “Sovereign Free-Associated State”, or Independence?  By the way, a “Sovereign Free-Associated State” would essentially re-negotiate their Commonwealth status but they would still be in that “grey area”.

The key was the first question.  Only those that voted “No” to the first question could count to vote on the second one.

Puerto Ricans voted “No” to Question One by a 54% majority.  Of those, over 61% voted for statehood.

In other words, for the first time since 1968, the majority of Puerto Ricans actually voted to end their current Commonwealth status and become a full part of the United States of America.

But don’t start planning your statehood party just yet.  It’s still not a done deal.

You see, before we can call Puerto Rico our fifty-first state, it has to go through the United States Congress.  Yes, we are talking about the same Congress that is dominated by one party that is inept and one party that would rather see your children die before doing anything to help out the guy in the White House.  It is now up to them to actually make Puerto Rico a new state.

Puerto Rico already has a “state” constitution.  It already has local infrastructure and “shadow representation” in Washington.  They have done all of the hard work to make statehood reality.  All they need is Congress to sign off on it.

And this is probably the silliest part of it all.  This commentator checked to see if there was any special procedure that needed to be done for statehood, and apparently it just requires Congress to approve it.  No super-majority vote, no two-thirds state ratification, not even a note from Epstein’s mom!  Just a simple bill sponsored and approved by both houses by a simple majority.  Unfortunately for the United States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the words “simple” and “majority” are alien to this batch of Congressional grifters and shysters.

Let’s get brutally honest here… I firmly believe that Congress should not waste too much time following through with this and make Puerto Rico the fifty-first state.

There is something for both dominant political parties to gain with officially following through with statehood for Puerto Rico.  For the House-dominated GOP, it’s an opportunity to bring in much-needed tax revenue from a territory that currently doesn’t pay any of our federal taxes.  You guys continually claim you want to eliminate the so-called “welfare deadbeats”, right?  Statehood will fix that for one for the biggest welfare recipients we currently have!  And for the Senate-dominated Democrats, you guys get two new full-fledged senators to offset the GOP minority!  Plus, remember what I said about welfare recipients?  They’re not going to vote for the party that takes their benefits away, are they?

At the very least, think of all of the jobs that would be created to come up with new American flags with 51 stars!  Oh, wait, all of our flags come from China now, don’t they?  Well they can correct that mistake as well.

But Congress needs to act on this, and they need to act now before the citizens of Puerto Rico realize just what the hell they’ve voted for and change their minds with another referendum vote.

Understand that Puerto Rico’s current status as a “territory” instead of a state is not unique.  We acquired it along with Guam and the American Samoans back in the age of “manifest destiny”, when American leaders decided to expand our “American Exceptionalism” like our counterparts in the European nations of England, France, and Spain.  We were a little late in the whole “empire-building” thing, but at least we still have ours!  And we treated these territories like we treated our own District of Columbia… it’s “ours” but not really “worthy” of being a full-fledged part of the United States.  We get our imperial cake and get the rest of the world to eat it too.

But just like we did with former territories Hawaii and Alaska over fifty years ago, we now have an opportunity to expand as a nation and bring in a new state whose people are now willing to be a part of.  And unlike the Middle East or Asia, we get to do it without needing to wage a war.  In fact, we already waged that war over a century ago… it’s just long past time that we finished collecting on it and to do away with the antiquated notion of having imperial-like territories.