RIP Christopher Hitchens

He was maddening at times, but I always went back for more because he was a mental drug I needed in a world that oftentimes seemed dominated by the idiocy of  the Palins, Bachmanns, Perrys, Trumps, and other members of the terminally stupid club. I knew that even if I completely disagreed with him, as I did many times, especially over the Iraq War,  the way he presented his side of the story was always a satisfying and  infuriating read. He was able to do something many people who feel passionately about a subject were unable to do: he was able to engage those who thought differently in the conversation. That is what made his intellect so addicting in a world increasingly populated by morons who wouldn't give an inch and expected you to swallow the whole mile.

But one area where we completely agreed was Atheism.  There was no maybe there. There was no taking the side of it with one hand and holding out skepticism with the other. He brilliantly described what I always knew about religion, that it flourished by destroying individual freedom, that it grew by creating followers instead of leaders, that it destroyed the humanity in people because it gave them an excuse to be evil. He saw religion as a wedge to divide people, a tool to control and manipulate them mentally, and a weapon to use on them if they dared to stray too far from conformity.

He took on Mother Teresa,  a woman who horrified my sense of decency when she stood outside the chemical plant in Bhopal and screamed for the world to forgive them for poisoning and killing all those people--while the bodies were still warm. He rightly attacked her for supporting the thieves and thugs in the Keating Scandal, for taking the side of the ugly underbelly of corporate greed over the innocent victims of that greed.

MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. READ MORE

I continue to profoundly respect  his courage in taking on the ultimate sacred cow and exposing her for the self-serving and religion-addled tool that she was. And it gives me great pleasure knowing that he outlived her, that he was able to dig deep into the roots that created her and educated many in the world about the dangers of being a tool for the ultimate wealthy and uncaring corporation: the Catholic Church. And while it is probably true that George Bush's disgusting use of religion to perpetuate his sadism and ignorance on the world created a backlash that converted many people to Atheism, and exposed Christianity as just another political tool, I am profoundly grateful to Christopher Hitchens for giving Atheism a validity it very much needed to counteract the ignorance and danger of that kind of  blind religious fervor.

May the worms nibble gently and may we all learn from the legacy of his maddening, intellectually satisfying assholiness. His life was worth the space it took on the earth. Not many can die with that accomplishment as their legacy.

Weapons of Mass Destruction by godless_heathen
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RIP Christopher Hitchens

Anna Nicole and The Bubble Boy

There's something deeply obscene and sad about the way the world came to a sudden stop the other day over Anna Nicole Smith. People who had shut out most of the Iraq war horrors, and the reality of a leadership that sees its own citizens as impediments on its path to perpetual war, and the juvenile and vengeful reactions of the Libby-Cheney cabal over someone who dared to insert some truth into their bullshit--they all stopped to pay a weird sort of homage to this pathetic caricature of a woman.


After I got over my outrage and stopped my stream of insults directed at the simple mindedness and short attention span of my fellow citizens, (her death replaced a crazed astronut in diapers, for dawg's sake!) I began to understand exactly what Anna Nicole represented and why she had such a pull on people. She was the America we've come to know in the last few years of the Bush Junta.


She was the garishness of an ideology that was fed by greed, an unfathomable lust for power, bling instead of substance, and the indifferent coupling required to move forward one notch on the political belt. With her inflated, unreal breasts, exaggerated red lips, and hair so stripped of color it was an anti-color, she paralleled the inflated expectations of world domination based on unreal mountains of evidence, an exaggeration of all fears and ethnic groups to more clearly create a red and blue divided country, and propaganda so stripped of truth that it became its own doublespeak crapped out daily by the White House press secretary of the quarter.


She was crude as Bushco is crude. She was uneducated as Bushco is uneducated. She was a package put together to appeal to the lowest common denominator just as the Buscho political agenda was put together to appeal to the dumbest of the dumb, the weakest and most gullible of the flock. She was portrayed as both the used and the user, just as Bush is portrayed as both puppet and inflexible ideologue. Everyone wanted to be her daddy but no one wanted to step up and take responsibility while she was alive, just as everyone can see the daddy issues between Bush the bubble boy and the daddy who loves Jeb best, but no one can step up and say get some therapy you assholes before you kill all of us.


And now the vultures that always follow train wrecks so they can pick the bones clean are circling Anna Nicole's preserved by court order body to lay claim to money she might be granted sometime in the mythical future. They are claiming paternity of her baby now that it is a child of future wealth and privilege instead of the product of their white trash coupling. They are saying oh how awful that she was so exploited as they stare transfixed at those enormous breasts, those red lips and hear that breathless little girl voice coming through the television screens once more.


And while they are so transfixed, Bush the Bubble boy is pulling wings off the fly that is Iran while shiny, ideological toys are waved in front of him by the neo-con vultures getting ready to wind up the idiot for one more spin around the room of smoke, mirrors and lies. If we fail to stop this next war in Iran, it is only fitting that Anna Nicole Smith becomes the historical symbol of our generation. We'll have earned her.

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Anna Nicole and The Bubble Boy

President Hillary Clinton?

It's really hard for me to figure out how I feel about Hillary running for president. She lost my heart when she didn't come out and say the Iraq war is wrong, based on lies, and let's get the hell out. It's why candidates like Obama and Edwards have my heart.

Obama says yes when asked if he did things like get high. He doesn't hide it like Bush does or stretch the truth ridiculously far like Bill who didn't inhale. He says what I want to hear about Iraq. I like Edwards for saying what I want to hear about Iraq. I like him even better because he acted like a real husband who cares about his wife when she had breast cancer, unlike Newt who ran into the arms of his intern mistress--and then condemned Bill for a blow job, when HIS wife got cancer.

But more than anything it comes down to Iraq for me. From the beginning, right after 9/11 when the bullshit began, I read what I could easily find online and immediately came to the conclusion that the reasons for the war were a crock and a case was being made that was based on flimsy heresy. Experts were ignored and discredited. "Suicides" of those who could verify this suddenly increased. It didn't take much for me to figure out Bush and Cheney were lying the country into war.

My anger at Congress is based a lot on this. If I knew, if a few days a couple hours at a time let me know the excuses for war were flimsy and stretched beyond belief, why didn't Congress who were much closer to the situation than I ever would be? Are they that stupid? Or were they that bought.

That is my problem with Hillary right now. Who owns her? She rides the centrist train as if it were the only ride in town with a promise of getting to the destination. I don't want centrist, Republican-lites. I want someone with the courage to go against the war machine. If Hillary can't even speak against it, is she strong enough for the job? And if she isn't, why should I vote for her instead of Obama or Edwards who at least make a pretense of being strong enough?

I don't want to vote for Hillary just because she is a woman, although as a woman in my 50's the time is getting shorter to see a woman president in my lifetime. I cried when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House. Only someone who grew up when I did and remembered what it was like to be a subservient secretary to an incompetent boss, or have all our accomplishements prefaced with female poet, woman writer, girl geek, or have school counselors tell us we could be Nurses and Teachers and Wives while the boys were told they could be anything they wanted, can ever possibily understand how important seeing a woman become President is to me and why I cried at the words: Madame Speaker.

But I didn't come all this way to compromise my principles just to see a woman become president. I am a Pacifist first and foremost. That is my soul and that is how I will vote.

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Changing minds one t-shirt at a time. Visit Ursine Logic for more designs.

President Hillary Clinton?

George Bush, Unfit To Serve

For anyone who is still deluded enough to believe that George Bush will listen to anyone but the seriously disturbed voices in his head, here is a definition of "Antisocial Personality Disorder" (formerly known as: Sociopath) from Medicine Net

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"Antisocial personality disorder:

A pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others and inability or unwillingness to conform to what are considered to be the norms of society.

The disorder involves a history of chronic antisocial behavior that begins before the age of 15 and continues into adulthood. The disorder is manifested by a pattern of irresponsible and antisocial behavior as indicated by academic failure, poor job performance, illegal activities, recklessness, and impulsive behavior. Symptoms may include dysphoria, an inability to tolerate boredom, feeling victimized, and a diminished capacity for intimacy.

Antisocial personality disorder, also known as psychopathic personality or sociopathic personality often brings a person into conflict with society as a consequence of a pattern of behavior that is amoral and unethical. Complications that might arise from having this disorder include: frequent imprisonment for unlawful behavior, alcoholism and drug abuse. "

Bush will NOT listen to reason when it comes to Iraq or anything else. Like most seriously disturbed people, reality is not something that has a snowball's chance of getting anywhere near his thought processes. To make it even worse, he is surrounded by those who are equally psychotic or who are manipulating his psychosis to further their own means. It is time, way past time, to seriously considering impeaching him. George Bush is unfit to serve as the leader of the United States.

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Changing minds one t-shirt at a time. Visit Ursine Logic for more designs.

George Bush, Unfit To Serve