Friday, March 31, 2006
Random rants
A collection of miscellaneous thoughts, none of which I could be bothered expanding into a full post of its own.
The Bushist GOP is undoubtedly the most radical extremist party in recent US history, but because they control the media and frame the debate, they are constantly wrapping themselves in the mantle of "traditional mainstream values" and sliming us liberals as radical far-left out-of-touch extremists. And notice how even someone like Bill Clinton is referred to as "far-left" - it's become a sort of verbal tic for the loonies. They do it so often, they don't even realize they're doing it any more.
The real division in this country is not between left and right - it's between moderates and extremists. It just so happens that all the extremists are on the right wing. There are no left-wing extremists in the US, certainly not in positions of political power, and few enough people who are even left of center by international standards.
Moderates of all shades of opinion are going to have to form a coalition to take the US back. It's a fatal error to regard religious-right Bushism as politics as usual when it poses an unprecedented constitutional threat to this country. We have to get the bastards out, and hold them accountable for their crimes, corruption and warmongering. Then we can go back to arguing about legitimate roles of government. But first, all of us in the reality-based community - liberals, progressives, constitutional conservatives, libertarians, anyone who doesn't buy into the toxic cult of Bush worship - will have to form a coalition of the clueful to effect regime change and restore democracy!
Another point: I'm tired of hearing that the Democrats have no ideas. The problem is that they have too many ideas! Every Democrat has his or her own pet ideas and isn't willing to work out a consensus so that the party speaks with one voice or something vaguely resembling it. Look at how the leadership stabbed Howard Dean in the back, stabbed John Murtha, stabbed Russ Feingold, stabbed Paul Hackett. If they expended half as much energy working together and getting a clear message to the voters as they do in petty internecine squabbling, we would have gotten rid of Bush and his claque of criminal traitors long ago.
And where are all the wonderful GOP ideas? They are simply regurgitating the same stale bromides that have already been thoroughly debunked. Tax cuts for billionaires, to stimulate the economy? Yeah, right. It brings to mind the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Rolling back public health and safety regulations, and trashing the environment for private gain? What, haven't you learned anything in the past century? Shredding the Constitution and appointing King George the Turd as absolute monarch? Sounds like a pre-1776 mentality to me. Creationism? Oh puh-leeze!
Hilary as candidate in '08? To quote Sue Myrick (R-NC), "not just NO, but HELL NO!" With Hillary on the ballot, Rove wouldn't even need to exploit wedge issues to get out the lunatic-right vote. Plus Hillary is an old-school Democrat who spends all her time listening to corporate lobbyists and highly paid head-up-the-ass consultants who have an abysmal track record of losing elections that should be slam dunks. Every move she makes and word she utters is calculated to appeal to the two dozen or so remaining swing voters instead of the base that is crying out for leadership, defense of Democratic principles and a clear alternative to Bushism.
Who do I want to see running instead? Howard Dean, definitely. Russ Feingold, maybe. Obama, ennnnh... not so much. He has been a big disappointment in the Senate, aligning himself far too often with the Hillary-Biden-Lieberman quisling wing.
To end on a cheerful note, conservatives are by definition on the losing side of history. They are trying to hold back the tide, Canute-like, and opposing change in a knee-jerk way without regard to whether change is needed. Sure, they can temporarily keep the clocked stopped or even turned back, but that simply means more upheaval when their time runs out.
I make an exception for people who are conservative in the sense of wanting to protect fundamental principles like democracy, individual freedom, and transparent and accountable government. (I just wish they would realize that government is not the one and only possible source of threats to their rights.)
But as for common-or-garden conservatives with their prurient obsessions about what strangers are doing in private with their various bodily appendages and orifices, I just don't understand them. The older I get, the more I realize how futile and downright stupid it is to worry about things like that. You're only setting yourself up for frustration and high blood pressure. "Live and let live" is just plain common sense!
It's now officially the weekend, I'm off for a beer. Be seeing you!
I ain't your code monkey!
Warning: this is a somewhat self-pitying rant that will be of interest to no-one who isn't a software engineer, and few enough who are. Normally I try to keep this blog unprofessional, i.e. I try to keep it separate from my work life, but today I just have to vent.
I have over 15 years' experience as a software engineer, and have forgotten more programming languages than most people will ever learn. Recently I was laid off, and this morning I had my first phone interview. It did not go well.
First, the interviewer had a very thick Indian accent and I could barely understand him (and I've worked closely for many years with people from every part of the subcontinent). But the worst part was that he exclusively asked "code monkey" questions that depend on rote memorization of arcane language features. The sort of stuff that you would never use in your day-to-day work, or if you did, you would reach for a reference book. Or you would write clean code to avoid the problem in the first place.
Far too many software industry hiring managers rely on canned lists of code monkey questions to drill candidates. It's lazy and it's counterproductive. There is far more to programming than memorizing lists of rules about operator precedence and what not. It's much more important for a candidate to have an innate sense of how to produce clean, well-architected code that is easy to understand, maintain, enhance and test. This is doubly true when you are interviewing senior, experienced software engineers who are going to spend most of their time analyzing a problem and designing a system, rather than coding - that's what the new grads and interns are for.
From my experience sitting on the other side of the interview table, there are precious few programmers who have this innate sense of good software architecture. Too many of them are obsessed with language tricks and producing terse, unreadable code because they think it's their job to optimize the code, and the shorter it is, the better. No, it's the compiler's job, and all you achieve with your "k3wl" code is to confuse the compiler and prevent it from applying some optimizations.
These are of course the people who ace the code monkey questions, get hired, and go on to produce reams of uncommented spaghetti code that doesn't work and can't be fixed. I should know, I've spent far too much of my career doing software archeology on other people's code. In almost all cases it would be quicker to throw out the code and write it from scratch.
And while I'm at it, I might as will list some of my other interview peeves:
- Companies where you send in your resume and it disappears into a black hole. Couldn't they at least send a canned automated response acknowledging receipt?
- Companies that use HR people to screen resumes, and the HR people see their job as weeding out as many resumes as possible, but they have no technical knowledge so the weeding-out process is arbitrary.
- Companies whose very first question is, "What are your salary requirements?" Look, I shouldn't have to play twenty questions! I want a job that is suitable for my level of skills and experience, and I expect to be compensated accordingly, based on market rates. If you don't have such a job on offer, there is no point in going any further.
- Companies who regard their tech employees as interchangeable coolies, and the managers and executives as the real stars. Let's face it, the managers and execs are overhead. The techies are the ones who are actually creating value. Your job as a manager is to hire good people, make sure they're on the same page, give them the resources they need, and then get out of the way.
- Companies who want to know my social security number at the very first stage of the interview process. Fuhgeddaboutit!
Anyway, enough ranting about the software industry - I'll get back to ranting about the lunatic extreme right later today.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Fear of Fucking
Oh my gawd on a hot dog bun with sauerkraut on top... what is this, the goddam twenty-first century BC?
Even couples who are not talking or touching can be reprimanded. Sabrina Poirier, a student at Pensacola [Christian College] who withdrew in 1997, was disciplined for what is known on the campus as "optical intercourse" - staring too intently into the eyes of a member of the opposite sex. This is also referred to as "making eye babies."The lunatic religious far-right love to trumpet their moral superiority and their embrace of the culture of life, yada yada yada. But it's becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the obvious: these people are simply afraid of sex. In their tiny minds, it has a dark, magical power over them, and they must constantly pray to some hippy-on-a-stick for the countervailing magical power to help them keep their legs crossed. One tiny slip-up, one instant of relaxation, and they are condemned to spend the rest of their lives helplessly driven by insane perverted passions, spewing out eye babies by the hundred (and no doubt eating them), puppets in a deranged orgy of hideous carnality. Then of course they die and are cast into the lake of fire to scream forever in infinite agony.
- Quoted by PZ; the full article requires a login (Update: or you can click here)
Like the Victorians draping little skirts over piano legs (and even shrinking in horror from the word "leg" itself), the Jeezus junkies constantly show themselves to be obsessed with sex in the most prurient, immature and unhealthy way imaginable. They truly live in a demon-haunted world. Sex, far from being a natural activity, becomes a primeval, pagan force of nature, or of Satan - to many fundies, the two are the same thing, hence their hatred of environmentalism. Sex is synonymous with sin, but since the Lord works in mysterious ways and didn't choose to have everyone be born of a virgin, sex can't be abolished completely. Instead it must be brought under control and hedged about with all sorts of superstitious strictures and taboos.
Think about any religious-right policy position that has some connection with sex. Is it based on a principle of compassion and respect for human life? No, it's invariably a product of a visceral fear and loathing of sex, and a zeal to punish people (especially women) for indulging in it. The same holier-than-thou legislators who are making it more difficult and demeaning to obtain an abortion are the ones gleefully slashing programs that help women to raise their children. "Pro-life states are less likely than pro-choice states to provide adequate care to poor and needy children. Their concern for the weak and vulnerable appears to stop at birth."
Think, too, of the berserk, frenzied, mouth-foaming hatred with which the lunatic right are overwhelmed at the mere mention of the word "Clinton". A man of such charisma that he can charm the pants off any woman - he must be in league with Satan! And a smart, independent woman who refuses to fit the mousy little Laura Bush mold - a witch! Burn her!
It's the same with gay marriage, abstinence-only "education", or any other wedge issue du jour - keep the useful idiots ignorant of basic facts about their own bodies, keep them ashamed and embarrassed about a basic part of their psyches, and rile them up with blind, unreasoning hatred of anyone who is different in any way in the sex department. No dictator could ask for a more perfect tool for controlling the masses.
I'm not a professional psychologist, but it seems pretty obvious to me that a satisfying sex life is essential for mental health. Sex drives are very powerful, and if you try to cut them off, they will spill over into some other area and express themselves in unhealthy and destructive ways. The lunatic religious right are walking, mouth-breathing examples of the damage done by blue-balled piety as they shriek and wail in an orgasm of vengeful righteousness, calling down hellfire and brimstone on everyone else who just wants to mind his or her own business and get laid occasionally.
It's almost possible to feel pity for these benighted, fearful catechumens, trapped in a narrow, rigid world of commandments and anathemas, bounded on all sides by demons and constantly watched by a cosmic Peeping Tom. (As Andrew Lias said, "Christian Fundamentalism [is] the doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.") But don't forget, these people have a monopoly on political, legal and media power in the US. We're trapped in their world too.
I wonder when Alito and Roberts will decide to burn women at the stake for aborting unborn eye babies...
Crashing the Valley
Stuart Dollar, who tirelessly runs both the Phoenix chapter of Drinking Liberally and the blog Desert Rat Democrat, has pulled off a coup: bringing Markos Moulitsas and Jeremy Armstrong, from Daily Kos and MyDD respectively, to the Valley - the very heart of Bush-is-Jesus reactionary religious right-ism - to give a talk and sign copies of their book, Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics. Here are the details, copied from DRD:
When: 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM, Thursday, April 13, 2006.
Where: My Florist Cafe, 534 W McDowell Road, Phoenix, Arizona
What: A book-signing and brief lecture from the book's authors. Books will be available for sale at the event for those who haven't already obtained a copy.
Cost: None (though we'd appreciate it if you'd throw our good progressive friends at My Florist a few bones, as an Air America Phoenix sponsor).
"My Florist" is at the northeast corner of McDowell and 7th Avenue - you can't miss the huge 50's-era neon sign. You have to try their turkey on pumpernickel sandwich, with brie and cranberry sauce. And I'm glad we're not going to be in the smoke-filled haze of the George & Dragon pub. Anyway, see you there!
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Seek and you will find...
Looking over my server logs since I moved to a new location, here are some of the queries people were searching for when they found my site:
- agnostic evolutionists
- always look on the bright side of life
- ben sliney
- georgie bush screen saver
- impeach this bastard
- katrina dead pics
- kxxt
- laura munsil
- no more mr nice guy
- procedure on how to raised quail
- saxe-gotha-coburg
- theory of taxpayer right remedy
Round up the delusional suspects
So now Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called twentieth hijacker, is claiming that he was the linchpin of a plot to fly a plane into the White House, with the personal blessing of Osama bin Laden.
I don't know about you, but I have the very strong impression that Moussaoui is a deeply deluded man with a massive but frustrated ego, and an even bigger death wish. He may have been peripherally involved with al-Qaeda, but the case against him was always weak and at best circumstantial. Known al-Qaeda members have contradicted his story.
Furthermore, the main thrust of the government's case is that Moussaoui could have helped foil the 9/11 plot if he'd told the FBI what he knew. But even if that's true, the FBI already knew far more than Moussaoui, and chose not to act on it. They are guilty of criminal negligence. And as for My Pet Bush... traitor is too mild a word for the clueless and apathetic vacationer-in-chief.
But the George Bush Junior regime, having signally failed to nab Osama bin Laden or anyone directly related to 9/11, is quite happy to enable Moussaoui's self-destructive impulses. In fact, in their unseemly eagerness to take his life, the Bushites may have blown their chance to do so - at least by legal means.
In case anyone has forgotten, the junta had its best chance to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora in December 2001, and let him escape, whether by design or incompetence is anyone's guess. But the show trial must go on, and the blood lust of slobus vulgaris americanus must be sated. Who cares whether Moussaoui is a scapegoat?
And so this sad-faced man will be dragged through the motions, and then put to death one way or another. What's one more, when the traitor-in-chief already has the blood of tens of thousands on his hands.
Monday, March 27, 2006
What a Guy!
I saw V for Vendetta last night. It's a very intense, powerful thriller. The Wachowski brothers have more than made amends for the Matrix sequels.
The central figure, played by Hugo Weaving, takes on the persona of Guy Fawkes to fight a totalitarian British government which rose to power by fearmongering and pandering to bigotry and homophobia. Hmmm, where have we seen that before? Anyway, Guy Fawkes is probably an unfamiliar figure to most US moviegoers, so a brief history lesson may be in order.
For several centuries following Henry VIII's split with Rome, England was convulsed with religious tension and warfare. Successive monarchs alternated between Catholic and Protestant, and demanded that their subjects give allegiance to the ruler's religion. The Protestants happened to be in power in 1605, when Guy Fawkes, an English soldier and a Catholic, supposedly plotted with some fellow Catholics to dig a tunnel under the Thames and into the basement of the Houses of Parliament, fill it with gunpowder and blow it up. Fawkes is said to have been "the only man to ever enter parliament with honest intentions."
The plot was discovered in the nick of time, Fawkes and his friends were tortured and executed, and the authorities seized on the pretext to introduce the Penal Laws, brutally oppressive anti-Catholic laws which were enforced with particular cruelty in Ireland until 1829. The legacy of hatred between Catholics and Protestants continues to this day in British-ruled Northern Ireland.
Some have speculated that, given the technology of the year 1605 and the nature of the soil under the Houses of Parliament, the idea that anyone could have tunneled in is implausible. Also, it seems that forged evidence was presented against Fawkes. Was the Gunpowder Plot the first Reichstag Fire? And the Penal Laws the first Patriot Act?
To this day, Guy Fawkes is a bogeyman in England. Instead of Halloween, British children celebrate Guy Fawkes night on November 5 by burning him in effigy and setting off fireworks. Which makes it a little unrealistic to imagine, as the movie and graphic novel did, that the British public would rally behind someone claiming the mantle of Fawkes. Robin Hood, maybe. And, sadly, Oliver Cromwell who is a national hero to the British although he was more like Hitler to the Irish. (In the movie, I saw John Hurt's character, Sutler, as a modern-day Cromwell.)
Alan Moore wrote "V for Vendetta" during the 80's as a response to Thatcherism, but it's scary how well it reflects Bushism today. But then, one of the themes is that there is no such thing as coincidence. Every tyranny gains power by pandering to people's lower natures - bigotry, hatred, fear and intolerance of others, a desire for simplistic soundbites and black/white dichotomy instead of having to deal with the real world in all its messiness and nuance. That's why democracy is hard work, and eternal vigilance - meaning, the obligation to keep yourself educated and informed - is the price of liberty.
Anyway, November 5 is still a few months away, but let's get this party started!
Friday, March 24, 2006
This blog has moved
The new address is:
http://www.nmmng.co.uk/
The RSS feed is:
http://www.nmmng.co.uk/XML/rss.xml
I've set up forwarding from the old site to the new one, but please update your bookmarks since the old site will go away soon.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Police State USA
Recently, the sleepy Phoenix bedroom community of Glendale made headlines when the police department spent a quarter-million-dollar Homeland Security grant on a 15-ton, ultra high tech, armored assault vehicle called BEAR - Ballistic Engineered Armored-Response vehicle.
The police are excited about their new toy, the first of its kind in the state, which can "resist a grenade blast... ram vehicles or smash through concrete walls... stop armor-piercing ammunition... detect explosives, deadly gases and radiation" and sports "gun portals, roof turret and other special features."
(No, that isn't the BEAR depicted above - I just like the picture. It shows Arizona rethug congressman, bloviating buffoon and Abramoff bedfellow J.D. Hayworth indulging his fantasies, and demonstrating his response to illegal immigration, in a Maricopa County Sheriff's armored vehicle. Image liberated from Desert Rat Democrat.)
Okay, this is all very funny, but wait a minute - Glendale, Arizona, isn't exactly Ground Zero of terrorism, anarchy and chaos. Do we really need these displays of massive, overwhelming firepower on our suburban streets? Especially at the expense of basic human services?
And when macho, trigger-happy cops are showered with these lethal toys, tragedies are inevitable - like the recent fatal shooting of a doctor in a SWAT raid. Even with violent crime trending downwards, the number of SWAT deployments has exploded in the last few years, and they are increasingly being used for routine police work. Meanwhile, the federal criminal code has mushroomed to the point where it's almost impossible to avoid unwittingly committing a federal offense as you go about your daily life. It's become so bad, even Fox "News" can't avoid commenting on the crisis.
I often feel that the US is a deeply immature society, awash in mindless testosterone-fueled aggression, and that our lords and masters are exploiting this juvenile belligerence to cover up their looting and plundering of our tax dollars. Keep the peasants entertained and in a permanently heightened state of blood-lust against non-existent threats, and you can get away with anything.
In the new Unholy Rovian Empire, it's all circuses, no bread.
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Walk like an Egyptian - bowl like a chimp
Oh gawd... just shoot me now. Could the chimp-in-chief possibly be any more of a national embarrassment?
When Irish eyes are rolling
There are times when I am really sick of Irish-Americans. And before anyone flames me as a racist, let me point out that I'm Irish myself. Genuine Irish, as in born in Ireland. Not like those idiots who stick an O' in front of some Polish name because they have a single Irish great-great-great-grandparent.
What don't I like about I-Ams? First, their ignorance, a trait they tend to share with Merkins in general. Specifically, they tend to think time stood still in Ireland from the moment the aforementioned great-to-the-Nth-power grandfather set foot on the boat. Like all Irish-born people, I roll my eyes when I hear some idiot ranting on about the jackbooted British Gestapo massacring the people of Northern Ireland. And the whole "pigs in the parlour" stereotpye lives on most strongly among Irish-Americans, in spite of the massive increase of prosperity in Ireland over the last few years.
Secondly, their notions of genuine Irish culture bears no relation whatever to the actual thing. For Christ's sake, nobody in Ireland eats corned beef and cabbage! On St. Patrick's Day or any other day! Ugh! I wouldn't feed that swill to a pig. And nobody over there could stand to listen to the "diddly idle" garbage that passes for Irish music here. MacNamara's Band can march straight into hell as far as I'm concerned, along with Mother Machree and Val Doonican.
Oh, and you're supposed to wear a sprig of shamrock on St. Patrick's Day - NOT dress like something the dog threw up. As a child growing up in Dublin, I remember the contingents of obese American tourists marching in the parade, dressed head to foot in bilious green, waving with child-like joy at the locals watching the parade from the sidewalk. The locals, needless to say, were doing their damnedest not to crack up in hysterical laughter at the sight.
St. Patrick's Day is of course the time when the whole degrading orgy of kitsch, mawkishness and ugly stereotypes about the drunken, brawling Irish reaches fever pitch. My wife wouldn't even show me the card my mother-in-law sent, in case I flipped out. Can you imagine sending a black person a card that said, "It's Martin Luther King day, go home and beat up your wife"?
But Irish-Americans share a great deal of the blame for this state of affairs. They eagerly embrace the negative stereotypes, and often reinforce them. They buy wholesale into the dumbing down, trivializing and deracination of their national holiday, their culture and their identity.
If it's March 17, it must be time for another bout of gay-bashing from the Ancient Ordure of Homophobes. For some unknown reason, the City of New York gives this sectarian, unrepresentative outfit - the other side of the coin from the unspeakably odious Ian Paisley - the monopoly on running the city's parade. The AOH is emblematic of all that is rigid, backward and reactionary about Irish catholicism. In recent years, they have often had IRA terrorists and gangsters as parade grand-marshalls and guests of honor. Meanwhile, many groups and individuals have been prevented from marching in the parade and celebrating their heritage because they committed the unpardonable sin of being gay.
The tradition continues this year, with parade chairman John Dunleavy showing the awesome power of Christ's love: '"If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow Neo-Nazis into their parade? If African Americans are marching in Harlem, do they have to let the Ku Klux Klan into their parade?" he asked pointedly. "People have rights. If we let the ILGO in, is it the Irish Prostitute Association next?"'
Stupidity like this deserves no comment. Let's just say this idiot should lay off the green beer for a while.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Hours of innocent fun...
... In a kind of twisted way.
Watch Bubble Boy AKA Mr. 34% in free fall, just like his approval ratings. If he gets stuck, you can pick him up with your mouse and throw him around. I think I have a new favorite screen saver!
http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm (Flash)
HT to Michael Miller.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Alabama burning
I've waited in vain for someone to articulate the glaringly obvious fact about the Alabama church burnings, that hilarious student prank that got out of hand: they were racially motivated.
Fact one: they were in Alabama. You can almost say "case closed" right there.
Fact two: the first several churches that were burned were black. That was presumably the "prank" part. Then some white churches were burned "to put the investigators off the scent", as the arsonists themselves admitted. Hello, do I need to draw pictures?
But noooo, we can't acknowledge the blindingly evident fact that race was a factor. Any time an act of terrorism is carried out, it must be brown-skinned Ay-rab heathens who hate us for our freedom. If the incident can't be shoe-horned into that script, it must be airbrushed out of our collective memory. And so we embrace with unseemly eagerness the comforting notion that this was just a jolly jape that went a little too far. Just like Timothy McVeigh's little stunt was a belated April Fool's joke, and WMD-stockpiler William Krar (a good ol' christian Texas boy) was a harmless eccentric. And as for Eric Rudolph... Eric Who-dolph?
Even more disgusting is the stampede of the christian dominionists towards the nearest microphone to proclaim that they are oppressed, marginalized victims. Yes, the crazed Mammon-cult that has a monopoly on political, legal and media power in the US wants to exploit this sorry affair and create some vast anti-christian conspiracy out of whole cloth. It's the gays, liberals and atheists crushing the poor defenseless "people of faith" beneath their iron heels! Where "people of faith" means hard-right WASP's - we can't let the uppity nigras gain any sympathy points out of this, they have too many already. And hey, the perps were from a liberal arts college - you know, where they spend all their time drinking beer and smoking dope instead of readin' the good book - heck, don't that prove librulls are evil!
There is something very sick and pathological about the extreme religious right's constant need, as it grows more and more powerful, to portray itself as a pitiful, persecuted victim group. Part of it is undoubtedly projection, as I discussed recently. And part of it is plain old dumb-assery and solipsistic navel-gazing. It's all me, me, me!
As Jesus would say, screw everyone else, look out for Number One. What, you didn't realize Jesus said that? Well, surely you've noticed that Jesus doesn't say very much at all nowadays. He's been co-opted by the US christian right, and in the process neutered and silenced. Becoming born again is all about joining the right tribe, and getting to sit in judgement over other people and control their lives. It has nothing to do with thinking about, far less modifying your own behavior!
And heavens forfend that you would actually follow the teachings of some hippy radical who drove the moneychangers out of the temple and preached loving one's neighbor and giving to the poor. Hell, that's way too liberal! Jesus the mute eunuch, the mascot devoid of meaning, is a much better fit with today's right-wing christianity.
Monday, March 6, 2006
You like me! You really like me!
The Koufax is the Oscars of blogdom, and holy cow - this blog has six nominations!
I've been nominated in the following categories:
Most Deserving of Wider Recognition
Most Humorous Blog
Most Humorous Post for each of the following posts: Best Post for Junior Jumps the Shark
Many thanks to the loyal readers who nominated me. You know what to do now - click on the links to Wampum and vote for your favorite blog and/or post. Arise, ye dark legions of the not-nice! Scatter the enemy! Vanquish the infidels! Win one for the gipper! Um... just vote. Pretty please?
Thursday, March 2, 2006
Nero: "I don't think anyone anticipated that Rome would burn"
What can you say except: busted.
Junior is a liar, a coward and a psychopath who doesn't give a rat's ass about anyone, for all his constant pious mouthing about his sacred duty to protect the American people. We in the sanity-based community knew it all along, of course, but now it's a case of shocking behavior caught on tape.
Wednesday, March 1, 2006
Air Jesusland
KXXT 1010 AM, the Phoenix affiliate of Air America Radio, is no more. It was bought by Communicom, a Christian broadcasting corporation, some time ago. Yesterday was the old format's last day on the air.
This morning on the way to work, I tuned in by force of habit. Some Jeezus junkie was twittering on, "9 is such a powerful number, 9 is a very biblical number." Aaaargh! The only radio station in Phoenix with a collective IQ above that of a sea cucumber has been silenced.
Desert Rat Democrat speculated that the station may have been bought out (for "stupid" money, supposedly twice the going rate) to silence liberal talk radio in the Valley. I've also heard a rumor that the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce had previously offered enticements to Clear Channel to buy KXXT and flip it to a christian format.
Part of me says, nah, business is business, these people only worship the bottom line. On the other hand, why would some hard-headed businessman take a station that had reached profitability in a matter of mere months (most stations take years to show a profit, if they ever do) and turn it into a format that already saturates the Phoenix market many times over? The Valley needs another christian station like Harry Whittington needs a hole in the head.
For many christians, infecting everyone else with the virulent meme that rots their brains is a driving force outweighing all others. And it's scary and depressing to realize how many christian millionaires there are who are active, and extremist, in furthering a radical-right christian dominionism agenda, sometimes involving hate and race supremacism, and always pushing the self-serving idea that vast wealth is a sign of God's favor. Think of Tim LaHaye, Howard Ahmanson and of course Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. These people could afford to buy a radio station every day, and sink money into it as an investment that will reap rich rewards in other areas, as the US continues to hurtle into mindless neo-feudal theocracy. Gotta keep reinforcing that brainwashing, don't you know!
In any event, I will have to get used to listening to internet radio streams and bringing music tapes with me on the commute. Goodbye to Charles Goyette, Fred and Steve McChesney, and the guy who did the "Conservatives, it's time to wake up" spots. Thanks for bringing a breath of fresh air, however briefly, to the Phoenix airwaves.
