21st Century Digital Boy

It turns out, William F. Buckley would probably have been fun to party with:

Buckley famously smoked marijuana — after sailing his boat outside the U.S. territorial limits, where it would no longer be illegal.

He had it on his boat, anyway, so isn’t that illegal? Oh, nevermind.

At any rate, when he died, there were a lot of jokes along the lines of, “He died because he finally realized what happened to his party and the conservative movement, and his heart couldn’t bear it any more.” This is probably more true than people realize:

“Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.”

He’s 100% right; and near as I can tell, has been marginalized by the new wing of conservatism for some time. He’s paid the appropriate deference as an elder, but any time he said “ok chaps, time to reassess things” he was patted gently on the head and told to go away and have a hard candy.

You know, if you dislike Obama’s policies, fine. Whatever. I get it. He’s an “arch-liberal” (whatever that is) who seeks to impose horrible socialism on Good American People.

What bugs me though is the continual “Osama” jokes, the Hussein jokes, and the fact that if he’s elected president there will be a notable number of people who will believe to the core of their being that he put his hand on the Qur’an and not the Bible.

This is willful ignorance, and a willful attempt to not talk about issues.

And no, you can’t then say “OK fine smart guy, let’s talk about issues” after making an Obama/Osama joke. You’ve already lost, asshole. You cannot start the game in willful ignorance then bring it back to substance; starting off with logical fallacies means you lose. Start the game strong with substantive discussion on his proposed policies, his voting record, and so on, or don’t play.

Honestly, if you somehow think McCain is good for this country, and Obama will destroy it, fine: let’s talk issues. Or, you can shut the fuck up.

(Update: I would say, “Check out something like this if you want the kind of substantive discussion I speak of”, except you already hate everything about DailyKos, even when the subject matter is more Hillary-vs-Obama than RIGHT-THINKING-AMERICAN-WAR-HERO versus GODLESS INFIDEL MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.)

Dear US Gov’t, House of Representatives, Senate, and related parties:

You know what? Fuck you, that’s what.

Your plan to stimulate the economy doesn’t amount of a fucking hill of beans. It’s a goddamned limpdick hand-job from a burned-out whore.

I mean, what more does this amount to than beer-and-cigarettes money? You know what’s going to go up? Lottery ticket spending, you stupid dickheads.

$1200 is half my fucking mortgage payment. Christ, I think it might not have even been my rent on my 1-bedroom apartment (that I shared with my wife; had I been single, I know the $600 wouldn’t amount to shit).

So if I’m about to get foreclosed, or about to have my car repoed, or $35,000 in credit card debt, what the fuck is that $1200 supposed to be for? New big-screen TV?

Problem the first is, you assholes have never been SMB - Seriously Muthafuckin Broke. Cause if you had been, you’d know: when one is SMB, one no longer gives a fuck about “economic stimulus”. $600 means, “I get a couple extra cartons of Basics and eat the non-generic Hot Pockets”.

In other words there is a kind of “failure point” where things become utterly binary: either you have the money or you don’t. There is no “payment plan” and there is no “economic stimulus”. SMB means “who gives a fuck”, maybe I will blow it all on lottery tickets, Marlboros, and beer.

Problem the second is, you assholes can’t afford politically to do anything meaningful and we know it. If I’m approaching SMB or generally just looking to make my financial situation strong, I very simply

1. Write down my total income
2. Write down all the things I spend money on (expenses)

Then if #2 is greater than #1, I start crossing shit off #2 (ie, reducing spending) until #1 is greater than #2. If I can’t make the totals work out I get another job.

But you assholes can’t do any of that, and you won’t do any of that. You won’t be fiscally responsible, ever. You’re children with their first credit card, uncaring what a minimum payment really means. You won’t just get the fuck out of the war (and use all that WOW FREE MONEY to, oh, pay down debt), you won’t stop ruthlessly piling pork and waste into spending bills, you won’t stop ensuring everyone everywhere gets some cut of the tax revenue no matter what.

The only answer you have to the fiscal clusterfuck you created is further fiscal irresponsibility. You’re like a person who’s $20,000 but frantically applying for credit cards, hoping they can get enough to keep shuffling that debt around. Throw enough money around the club until everyone forgets what an unbearable asshole you are.

Honestly I don’t even want the money (ok that’s a lie I LOVE FILTHY LUCRE, but bear with me). I feel like I’m rewarding bad behavior. Somehow this is supposed to stimulate the economy: I guess a new TV helps? Given that it’s built with Chinese labor by a Japanese company? But Wal-Mart will get their slice so I guess that’s OK.

“What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be,” he said at the forum, sponsored by The New York Post. “Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”

(source)

He later added that Oceania has has always been at war with Eastasia.

Massachusetts Begins Universal Health Care

Those who do not qualify for subsidies and cannot get coverage through their jobs can buy low-cost but unsubsidized health plans offered by private insurers through the Connector under the Commonwealth Choice program.

Or, hey, how about we just try the goddamn free market? This is no different from now, except these “private insurers” are gov’t subsidized, and the core of the system is still tied to employers.

Why does everyone hate the free market so much? I just don’t get it: so far every health reform is musical chairs, only no one takes a chair away when the song ends. Everyone sits down and claps and marvels at how better this arrangement is.

A commenter on Wonkette sums things up nicely:

Derbyshire thinks it’s those marines duty to die for their country. I like Patton’s philosophy better:
“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.”

which pretty much sums it up. I find it infinitely amusing that civilians with absolutely no military service EVER, condemn people on the sharp end for not just up and dying for their country.

YES, if the rules say, “Don’t allow yourself to be a puppet” then they should have disciplinary action against them. But c’mon: I am not aware of a standing order that said, “If captured, death before dishonor”. (At least I don’t recall anything about it)

I guess I don’t get why it’s such a big deal that Ann Coulter called John Edwards a “faggot”.

Since she’s a tranny, and a cunt.