Incredibly, Missouri GOP Has A Senate Candidate Even Crazier Than The One In Texas

By Manifesto Joe

Rep. Todd Aiken, a Republican, represents Missouri's 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House. I didn't think it possible, but he's even more of a kook than former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, who's likely to be this state's next U.S. senator.

Aiken, 65, suggested during a TV interview Sunday that women who are victims of "legitimate rape" are biologically unlikely to become pregnant -- attributing this ludicrous "science" to "doctors." A lot of top Republicans have called on the congressman to withdraw from his challenge against U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat.

Akin has apologized for his remarks, but he insists that he'll stay in the race. The deadline for him to drop out passed on Tuesday.

It's a close call, but I'd say Aiken's foolishness has exceeded that of Cruz, 41, who's on record as saying a good many insane things. To quote Tarrant County (Texas) Democratic Party Chairman Steve Maxwell:

Cruz is on the record saying there is a conspiracy to eliminate golf courses, unemployment benefits lead to more unemployment and that Sharia law is a "enormous" problem.

None of the above is very surprising, as the Texas Republican Party came under the control of psychopaths long ago. More from Maxwell:

Similarly, the Texas Republican Party Platform ranges from the silly to downright frightening –- doing away with minimum wage, repealing the Voting Rights Act, promoting corporal punishment in schools, but eliminating critical thinking (which makes sense, based on the fact that it is now clear, Republicans have done away with all thinking).

But I would say that Aiken, with his pronouncement that a "legitimate" rape victim can shut down the advance of an unwelcome sperm through sheer biological will, has Cruz bested in the category of mental illness.

Scumney's attempt at distancing

I suppose it can be marked just a bit to his credit that Slick Willard Scumney immediately realized what an appallingly stupid thing this was to say. But his struggle to distance himself from kooks like this rings hollow.

The problem is that Scumney chose Rep. Paul "Ayn" Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate. And Ayn has worked closely with Todd Aiken in the past, as recently as 2011.

Ayn and Aiken co-sponsored a bill that would ban abortions in the case of "forcible" rape. These two have co-sponsored quite a few anti-abortion bills, including the proposed "Sanctity of Life Act," which says that "every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood." And by that, they mean that a "person" exists from the very moment that an egg is fertilized.

Ayn's public positions on abortion are no different from Aiken's. But now, of course, he wants to be vice president, so we're not hearing much from him on this issue.

This gaffe needs to be kept alive through the first week of November. The Republican Party has been hijacked by lunatics, and now it's across the nation, not just in Texas (where that happened long ago).

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Back To The Roots: Here's The Flamin' Groovies, Live In 1972

I thought it would be well to give the old band their shot. I think Webb's cover is "tighter." But, hindsight is always 20/20. The Groovies were a gas, and I'd say that Mick, Keith & the Stones were actually no better at the time.



Unheralded stars! -- MJ

Webb Wilder's Most Excellent Cover Of 'Slow Death'

I had been waiting for someone to download this wonderful cover. You may notice that, along with pictures of Webb, 58, and his veteran Nashville band, that there are stills of the Flamin' Groovies, who did this song back in the early 1970s.



One thing that I think hampered all of them, including the old band the Flamin' Groovies, is that they all played this pretty tongue-in-cheek, even this explicitly anti-drug song. Webb has always played everything for laughs. I don't know why that should limit anyone. All should be stars now! -- MJ

A Movie That Sucked So Horribly, Nobody Wants To Remember It Except Me

By Manifesto Joe

I don't know how many people got their money taken from them during the winter of 1976-77, by paying to sit through the movie called The Way He Was, an attempt at a parody of Dick Nixon and his assorted Watergate buffoons.

I thought of this movie recently, as one of very few in which I've seriously considered going to the box office and demanding my money back.

Their headliner for this incredible schlock was Al Lewis, better-known as Grandpa in The Munsters. I won't go so far as to speculate that he had gambling debts, but his retirement couldn't have been too cushy if he was willing to take a paycheck for this excrement. And, to be honest, I don't even remember which role he played. I was pretty disgusted halfway through the flick.

They actually had a dude in a Nixon mask playing the lead role. And, Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were depicted as The Three Stooges. It had lots of "funny" lines, like when somebody has an appointment with the president, and under the mask, a Nixon impersonator who's no better at it than I am responds in Nixonesque accent, "Well, tell 'em to fuck off!"

The thing is, I tried to find some kind of reference to it online. Internet Movie Database, which prides itself on having something about damn near everything, had nada, nothing, on this one. Rotten Tomatoes had an entry, but no reviewers would touch it.

I remembered this as being one of the most truly, incredibly BAD movies I've ever seen, including things like Wrestling Women Vs. the Aztec Mummy. Of course, at this particular time, everybody left and right was kicking the shit out of Nixon, who's now remembered as one of America's most intelligent -- and craziest -- presidents. The paranoia factor there just was too much for the rest of the package to justify.

His interviews with David Frost came soon after that. Nixon kicked Frost's inexperienced candy ass in their first encounter, but didn't fare well after that. He'd done too many bad things, and Frost got better in the succeeding faceoffs.

Anyway, we've come such a long, long way since those primitive 1970s. Nixon would be regarded as a liberal now. And movies are better than ever!

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Rand, Paul Ayn's Idol, Was Hypocrite Who Took Social Security, Medicare

By Manifesto Joe

Republican vice presidential pick Paul Ayn has gotten by with some prospective voters by flashing them that shit-eating grin. But not everybody has forgotten about his past pronouncements of admiration for the garrulous swill of would-be novelist Ayn Rand.

"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," said Rep. Ayn at a D.C. event honoring the so-called author. On another occasion, he proclaimed, "Rand makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism."

Let us recall that this demented slut Rand, who characterized those who take government payments as "moochers" and "parasites," took Social Security herself, and Medicare, too, when the inveterate chain smoker was confronted with self-inflicted lung cancer at the age of 69. She had previously proclaimed scientific warnings about smoking to be a hoax.

Here's a link to an article on the subject.

Just in passing, let us note that despite a cult of mentally ill admirers, Rand is generally regarded by serious critics as a vapid purveyor of nonliterature. Her seemingly endless railings were so awful that Whittaker Chambers, a darling of the far right after he was a witness against Alger Hiss, was essentially exiled from much of the right-wing twit "movement" after he wrote a scathingly negative review of Atlas Shrugged for the National Review in 1957.

As a novelist, she just plain sucked. OK, we'll put that aside for a moment. The horrific effect that her toxic, selfish ideas have had on generations of American pseudo-intellectuals is yet another issue. And now, with a likely vice presidential candidate who's a "disciple" of this ugly slattern, we've seen the poison of her influence come to full fruition.

I suppose it can be argued that, since Rand was the ultimate spokesperson for selfish opportunism, it shouldn't be surprising that she'd be a hypocrite who would cash in on the welfare state when she got the chance. She would just characterize something like that as her good luck, and somebody else's bad luck in a less prosperous and charitable time.

Slick Willard Scumney does his best to project himself as the captain of his own vessel, but make no mistake -- his choice of Paul Ayn as a running mate is a clear overture to the "GOP's" powerful far right wing. For a while he didn't seem like one of them, but he's made clear that he's telling the "I've got mine, so fuck you" wing of the Republican Party that he'll generally do what they tell him to do.

Unfortunately, we've had a few powerful folks in Washington who have been "disciples" of the Ayn Rand Cult. Longtime Fed chief Alan Greenspan immediately comes to mind. Yet even he, as the U.S. economy came dangerously close to collapse circa 2007-09, eventually had to admit that his "free market" dogma may have had some points of error.

I would have hoped that the near-collapse of our economy would have relegated these sophomoric trolls to the back waters of American discourse, where they belong. I suppose I was being too optimistic, because even the Great Depression couldn't educate Rand, who became popular as a "literary" apologist for robber barons during that very era.

Even if the Scumney-Ayn ticket loses in November -- and I pray that Obama and Biden will do everything possible to expose this cult follower in the meantime -- Ayn will probably be peddling his opportunistic snake oil again in 2016. This kind of venom just never seems to go away, no matter how discredited.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Eric Hobsbawm Discusses 'Responsible Capitalism'

I have some misgivings about Professor Hobsbawm, given his past as sort of an apologist for Stalin. But I thought he has some excellent observations here, and I was surprised to discover that he's still alive.



Again, this is Professor Eric Hobsbawm, (1917- ), recorded in January. -- MJ

'Biggest Brown-Noser' Ryan To Be GOP VP Pick

By Manifesto Joe

If this is Romney's choice for a running mate, 99% of Americans under 55 should prepare to be thrown under the bus.

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, 42, looks to be Slick Willard's choice for a vice presidential running mate. It's a pretty clear signal from Scumney to the Republican Party's powerful far right wing -- pssst, I'm really one of you guys! I just played like a moderate to get elected governor of Massachusetts.

Ryan, who was literally voted "Biggest Brown-Noser" by his 1988 high school classmates, is a Young Republican poster boy. Here's a link to his Wikipedia biography, by the way.

My wife, who is not much better at brown-nosing than I am, keeps telling me that it pays off. In Ryan's case, it certainly seems that way.

If the Scumney-Ryan ticket wins in November, we will have a heartbeat away from the presidency a man who has very seriously proposed privatizing Social Security and replacing the current Medicare program with a voucher system. The concrete proposals have been for phase-ins (should I say phase-outs?) that wouldn't apply to Americans over a certain age, generally given as 55. That makes all this more palatable for older people -- retired Tea Party types can keep collecting their checks while throwing younger people under the bus with nary a thought.

A sad thing about politics, in any country, is that there usually has to be a bloody, fatal wreck at the intersection, so to speak, before someone will put up a traffic light. Social Security, in effect since 1935, is largely taken for granted. There are no seniors around who can remember the time before we had Medicare, starting in 1965. So, as collective memories grow fuzzy, it is looking like tragic reality that people are going to have to see, with their own eyes, what American life will be like with no such entitlements.

The Obama-Biden ticket would be well-advised to make Ryan's record on these issues a centerpiece of their campaign. Of course, they'll be accused of fear-mongering and "class warfare" and such -- fine, let the other side talk that trash. The American Class War looks like it's been effectively over for decades anyway (want to guess who won?), so it's a guerrilla struggle from now on.

One afterthought is wonderment about how someone like Paul Ryan could be elected to seven terms in the U.S. House from a seemingly progressive state like Wisconsin. This is a place that elected the La Follettes, Bill Proxmire and Russ Feingold.

But, Scott Walker is governor there now, having survived a recall election. And Joe McCarthy was elected to the U.S. Senate there -- twice.

Oh, well. There's plenty to be ashamed of in Texas. But at least we never sent Joe McCarthy to Washington. We had to settle for Martin Dies.

Unfortunately, it looks alarmingly as though Paul Ryan will be going back there soon, and perhaps with a promotion.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Rich Have Offshored Their Wealth -- Scumney, Too?

By Manifesto Joe

We live in a time in which ordinary people are being told to expect far, far less. Social Security isn't even a given, nor is Medicare. And yet, now we hear this:

Super Rich Holding $21 Trillion Overseas to Avoid Taxation

Here's the link. That number is "conservative" -- the actual one could run as high as $32 trillion.

This not only comes at a time like this for America -- EU countries are in a bind, too.

I have a "conservative" friend who once made a reference about "money we don't have." Bullshit. Fucking BULLSHIT. It's there, and we KNOW who has it. They are hiding it in places like the Cayman Islands.

Is Slick Willard one of them? We can only guess. Why won't he release his tax records?

The era of "responsible capitalism" is over

It would appear that the only thing that forced that situation was the international challenge of socialism. Granted, socialism didn't hold up well, for reasons that don't have to be enumerated. But when faced with something like an international challenge, "capitalists" had to behave more responsibly.

Karl Marx was certainly wrong about a lot of things. But one thing he predicted was that, despite myriad attempts to "reform" capitalism, it would always revert back to its original, brutal form. It's looking like Karl was right about that one.

So, what to do now?

Revolutions don't generally turn out well, when you look at history. I can't say that I would recommend them. But if there isn't some kind of serious turnaround in Western societies within the next decade -- well, something else dramatic will have to happen. If it doesn't, we will be walking around as plutocrat trolls for the next couple of centuries. The plutocracy has the technology to commit this atrocity, unless we the people prevent it.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Chick-Fil-A Runs A Ruse On Their Customer Base

By Manifesto Joe

I haven't looked at many Chick-Fil-A's around the country, so I'm going mainly by what the Mainstream Media say about this. There are gaping primates all over the country standing in line outside the stores, dragging their knuckles to the door just to get a rarefied taste of that unique blend of featherless cardboard and white-bread goo.

I was born, but it wasn't yesterday. I had heard long ago that Chick-Fil-A was a right-wing fundamentalist company, worse than all those Republican-donating burger chains out there. I recall eating there only one time, maybe 20 years ago, when there was absolutely nothing else around to eat. Blah.

By putting out a homophobic statement denouncing gay marriage, the chain's CEO has boosted sales tremendously, from what I've heard. I don't think there can be much doubt about the effect that this has had. Gay people and those reasonably sympathetic to them weren't eating there a lot in the first place, so any boycotts that have resulted have been negligible. It's the traditional Chick-Fil-A customer base that has been energized by this.

Aside from their politics, I always thought the Chick-Fil-A ad campaigns, you know, the billboards with the semiliterate cows, were detestable and in the poorest of taste. You remember those -- "Eat mor chiken," and such. And I'm not even a vegetarian. It's just stupid to make fun of unfortunate barnyard animals.

(Sadly, I've had Tea Party commenters on this site who were no more literate than the Chick-Fil-A cows were.)

Personally, I decided decades ago that their food totally sucks, and later I learned that they were prehistoric fundamentalists who always close on Sundays (See you in church).

But clearly, the effect that this had was calculated. Their traditional customer base, the great unwashed, all decided at once that they just HAD to have themselves one of those no-taste Chick-Fil-A sandwiches.

They are welcome to them. I can find better things to eat from tins in a dollar store, tossed with sauteed veggies and a bowl of pasta.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

RIP, Gore Vidal: 1925-2012

I can't say that he was just always my huckleberry. But I thought ol' Gore said some funny things at times, and I would say that, rather unfortunately, he had a good handle on what was wrong with America in modern times. Bon voyage, Mr. Vidal. -- MJ

Ted Cruz Racks One Up For The Kooks!

By Manifesto Joe

Early returns are good enough for former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz to claim victory in the Republican runoff for U.S. Senate from Texas. He leads Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst with about 55%, so just about everybody is calling this one for him.

Cruz, 41, was always the Tea Party fave in the race, and even got the endorsement of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. I don't think many liberals like rich boy Dewhurst, 66; but he's perceived as an establishment Republican, one who might actually not treat Democrats like pond scum if he had been elected. Cruz apparently has the support of all who want to lead the U.S. into some kind of civil war. He seems pretty certain to win the general election over his Democratic opponent, former state Rep. Paul Sadler. We'll see how effective he is at working across the aisle.

Personally, I don't especially mind seeing this sort of thing happen regularly, because it will take that for Republicans to realize that they've got a Frankenstein monster on their hands. It was already that way with the "Religious Right." Now, the Tea Party has given the crazies of the right wing a more secular focus, and they are getting their voters to the polls.

This will mean more high-profile politicians who favor teaching creationism in public schools, and who oppose abortion even in cases of incest and rape. This will mean more of them who favor cutting taxes for the super-rich, even when the federal deficit is in the trillions and big corporations are on record as paying no income tax at all. This will mean more of them who think all Muslims in America are terrorist sympathizers -- you know, the kind who take arsenals into movie theaters and kill a dozen people.

In other words, the differences between the right wing and everybody else will be more clearly delineated. I doubt that Cruz himself believes all of the above, but I would be willing to bet that at least one-third, and perhaps even half, of all Texans who voted for him would lean toward agreement with all of the above. This state has no shortage of ignorant lunatics.

The only impediments Cruz faces are that he has a Hispanic surname -- lots of people would deny it, but there's still a shitload of racism in this state -- and his physical appearance. If Bill Murray and Pat Buchanan could have a male child, Ted Cruz is what it would look like. That dark, goofy countenance won't help him much.

But he has strong appeal for a psychopathic element in Texas politics, and is more than likely to be our next U.S. senator. The state will soon likely rival Oklahoma (James Inhofe and Tom Coburn) for having the most certifiably insane U.S. Senate delegation in the nation.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

America The Stupid, Part 4

63% of Americans think Mitt Romney's business background would make him more able to manage the economy.

By Manifesto Joe

Yep, that's according to a recent poll conducted by USA Today/Gallup. Here's a link to the story.

That's in spite of Bain Capital's reputation as a predatory, job-destroying, job-exporting entity, and all the attendant publicity thereof.

And that's in spite of the fact that, according to another poll, 44% of Americans think that Slick Willard isn't releasing his tax returns because there's something damaging there that he wants to hide.

That poll was taken just a few days earlier, by the same organization. Here's a link to that story.

What this means is that a significant number of Americans think that although Romney did something on his taxes that would be politically very damaging, their eyes still glaze over when somebody shows them a rich MF who was the CEO of a big corporation.

Must be smarter than I is, they thinks.

Well, sadly, I fear that this may be so. But just barely.

"Mitt the Twit" Scumney just got through making a ludicrous fool of himself at the Summer Olympic Games in London, so we're pretty sure he's no diplomat. And managing a sleazy enterprise like Bain Capital doesn't make him any economic wizard, either.

A sad feature of the American "mentality" is the equation of intelligence with wealth. "If you's so smart, why ain't you rich?" is an old quotation that sticks in my mind. I have no doubt about the nationality of its origin.

And charlatans have parted many an American from his or her money along the way. One of the most visible nowadays is the contemptible Robert Kiyosaki, "author" of a book called Rich Dad Poor Dad.

This pompous ass apparently did well being a parasite in the real estate market, and is now separating people from their money with classes telling how they, too, can do this.

His biological father was a highly educated man who became superintendent of the Hawaii State Department of Education, but was "poor." In contrast, his alleged mentor (some critics question whether such a person ever existed) was a high school dropout with lesser income who put his money into passive-income investments, such as real estate, and became the "richest" man in Hawaii.

Sounds to me like Kiyosaki's biological father was a stalwart person who actually devoted his life to doing something for the betterment of society as a whole. His "mentor," if such a person does exist, was a parasite who amassed a fortune being some kind of slumlord.

Now back to Slick Willard Scumney. He's spent all summer on the defensive, and I suspect that more gaffes and missteps are on the way.

But in a society stupid enough to fork this much cash over to a mountebank like Robert Kiyosaki, one worries that Scumney might be able to pull in more than, say, 49% of the electorate. The rest of us must fight to ensure that he does not.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Laid Off, And Taking A Short Break

I'll be posting again shortly, but I've gotten word that I'm being laid off from my job. I've been a little preoccupied since hearing that news. The last full day I was unemployed was March 4, 1982, so this will be an experience I haven't had in a long time. I'll be posting again soon -- and maybe I can persuade Geekus to do something, since he hasn't worked in years. -- MJ

Mainstream Media And Corporate Neoliberalism

By Manifesto Joe

Biased toward the left -- and biased toward the right. How can both be true?

Leave it to America's Mainstream Media -- they have somehow managed to give both impressions to different groups of activists, and I think I can explain why.

I will preface by saying that I have a very admitted and open bias toward the left, at least by American standards. And, that's the very reason why I'm writing this blog, as it is clearly a consistent expression of opinion. After nearly 56 years on this planet, I know that the "left" has no monopoly on the truth or on facts. But I find myself agreeing with their world view at least 70% of the time, so I chose sides long ago.

But what one finds upon close examination of the American MSM is a sort of "neoliberal" mind-set that can seem downright radical to a right-wing evangelical Christian, and then like 19th-century apologists for robber barons to progressives and liberals.

Evangelicals tend to be focused on social issues -- and generally anything that has gained much social acceptance since the 16th century or so is something they view with suspicion. To them, abortion is murder, pure and simple, with no gray areas. Women should be content to be second-class citizens and strictly obey their husbands and fathers. Cultural diversity is liberal hogwash, as it in their view ignores the simple "fact" that one's own group, church, race, etc., is always presumed superior to any other.

My bias toward the left tends to include an open mind, at least of sorts, regarding social issues. It runs contrary to my experience for someone to propose that my group, race, or whatever, is in some way intrinsically superior to another person's. And considering the vast holocaust that our society carries out against our partner animals daily, it's hard for me to consider ending the life of a first-trimester fetus that has a tail (and little brain activity) to be the same as homicide. It's a sad and even gruesome thing, but legislating one's religion seems inherently much worse.

Something one does routinely see in the MSM is a mind-set that is center-left on most social issues, at least by American standards. The basic corporate MSM line is:

Diversity ... GOOOOOD

The MSM accept racial equality as a given, are usually sympathetic toward abortion rights, and tout cultural diversity as a thing that people must have been mentally ill cave dwellers to have not embraced decades or even centuries ago. These are assumptions now, and in the eyes of right-wingers, an ironic form of liberal dogma.

And, the MSM won't get too much argument from me about all of the above. True, as a working-class white male, I was passed over for decades for jobs and promotions so that women and minorities could get their feet in the door of the middle class. (And meanwhile, the good ol' boys who REALLY belonged to the club were quite unaffected, because they always had their OWN affirmative-action program.)

OK, fair enough -- the viewpoint of women and minorities would likely be, now at least some of you white male SOBs get just a tiny taste of the kind of shit we had to eat for centuries. I understand that viewpoint well.

But the typical working-class, white American male listening to Rush Lardbaugh doesn't generally share that world view. They cream their pants with glee when Herr Lardbaugh launches into tirades about "femi-Nazis" and continues with barely masked exhibitions of racism.

To them, the MSM have a liberal bias, if only for the reason that Herr Lardbaugh lies just a bit outside of how the MSM usually defines the political mainstream.

Personally, I have few problems with the MSM's mind-set in this regard, whatsoever.

But that's not the whole story.

In particular, study the pages of the U.S. business press, and lots of us can quickly detect a very different sort of bias:

Capitalism and free markets ... GOOOOOOD. Labor unions and big government ... BAAAAAAD.

I remember being asked once if I thought that the MSM outlet that I work for has a liberal bias, because obviously the person who asked the question believed that to be so.

My reply was that, well, if they're so liberal, perhaps they'd let me try to organize the staffers into a union shop. I ventured that I didn't think I'd last very long.

The man asking me the question had no response to that.

The key word here is neoliberalism. It is essentially an acceptance, as a given, of 20th-century attitudes toward social issues -- but accompanied by a strict adherence to 19th-century "classical" economic theory.

Upon close inspection, it becomes apparent that America's business media are generally in the hands of people who grew up in solidly middle-class homes, at least. They and their families could take for granted being able to afford good colleges, and their climb up the journalism ladder was never in much doubt, because they probably knew people who could and would help.

The articles I've seen have referred to an average haircut as costing $45 (where are these people getting their golden locks trimmed?), and about how the thrifty habits of people like Carlos Slim and Warren Buffett have done so much to aid them in amassing vast fortunes, and so forth. Like, they still live in relatively modest homes that they bought decades ago, and some of them don't even own private jets! Wow, such deferment of gratification!

Thinking of such people as being the least bit "in touch" with the lives of ordinary Americans is not unlike portrayals of Mitt "Slick Willard" Romney as some kind of Man of the People.

If you've never been in a grueling, low-paying, exploitative situation with Eddie Haskell types for bosses, then I suppose you would have no reason to understand why someone would want to give 4% of their paycheck to a labor union. (For one thing, you can bet that in a union job, the paycheck would be much bigger even after one pays the dues.)

But you don't find people with that kind of labor experience in the business press, nor does one generally find them among U.S. news executives. From what I've seen, those offices are mainly populated by people who have led very charmed lives. They don't end up being the "grunt" workers of the industry, and they always knew that was never what the profession would hold for them.

So, folks like this get to feel just, oh, so enlightened on social issues, while toeing a primitive company line on anything that's work- or economics-related.

And that, boys and girls, is one of the big reasons why righties call the MSM "liberal" and believe that it is biased that way, while lefties can clearly see that they would quickly land in the unemployment line if they dared to bring an organizer onto the property.

And that is how different groups can somehow call the MSM biased in opposite ways. "Neoliberalism," anyone?

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

America The Stupid, Part 3

By Manifesto Joe

I will preface by saying that I don't think Americans are inherently more stupid than any other nationality. Stupidity is something that seems to know no boundaries of nation or group. Daily reading of the international pages of newspapers offers ample evidence of that.

But American stupidity seems less forgivable than that found in other places, because of affluence. And, ironically, it appears that much domestic ignorance is rooted in that very affluence.

Oh, there's certainly a sizable underclass in America. Somebody born to a crack whore for a mother, and who doesn't know who his or her father is, probably doesn't stand much of a chance, decent public schools or not. Income inequality is probably a big factor. And, I can't say that I grew up affluent, at least not by American standards.

But, the middle-class Americans I have known grew up largely taking plenty for granted that can't be taken so elsewhere. Among those things seem to be even the most modest intellectual achievements. Middle-class Americans often grow up complacent, with computer games and Smartphones, generally believing that there will always be "brains" out there who will manage to devise such things. Never mind where they came from. Affluence seems to furnish a path to intellectual laziness.

As Exhibit C, I will offer the findings of Newsweek, which gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. citizenship test. Candidates for citizenship are given a random list of 10 questions from among 100 included in the full test, and they have to get six of them right to pass.

Some 38% of Americans who took that test failed, including 29% who couldn't name the current vice president, and 73% who couldn't correctly say why we fought the Cold War.

I took the test with a sample of 20 questions, and got 18 of them right. I suppose that's very good, but as a career journalist with over three decades of experience, I should have gotten them all. What did I miss? I guessed that there were 26 constitutional amendments, rather than 27, and I named power to regulate interstate commerce as one of the original powers that the Constitution gives the federal government (that didn't come until later).

Here's a link to an article on the subject, and you can also take a version of the test here.

The big problem here is that a lot of those among the 38% who fail are voters. Are these people you want making civic decisions? I'll leave you to ponder that question.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Now Scum-Sucking Right-Winger Scalia Will Have To 'Get Over It'

By Manifesto Joe

Oh, I'm not buying drinks for the house just yet. This was Round 2. There will be many more rounds to go. But the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court to uphold almost all of "Obamacare" was significant.

Problem is, on Monday the Supreme Court also came down with a nasty 5-4 decision for the Citizens United grotesquerie for a second time, which means that even the lukewarm compromise that was "Obamacare" is still in danger. (See my previous blog post.) That decision pretty much ensured that American politics will be awash with corrupting money for at least another generation, so there's not really much to celebrate.

But I love to see right-wingers being upset. Especially Antonin "Get Over It" Scalia.

Another big problem is, we've still got an abysmally stupid population here in the Free World's Leading Country. It's really worse than it is in a lot of other places, and that's saying plenty. Last night I was working, but happened to catch a snippet of some talking head on CNN. This woman said something like, "We're not living in some socialist country, like Russia." (And nobody corrected her.)

Wow. For one thing, I'm not sure if this person has ever heard, but the Soviet Union broke up over 20 years ago. Russia now seems to be ruled by a coalition of oligarchs, robber barons and gangsters. (Like, wow, that all sounds very familiar!)

For another thing, even if the Soviets were still around, the comparison is moronic. As I understand the way this is going to work, the private insurance companies can look forward to about 30 million more "customers" (the word I'm thinking of actually starts with an "s"), and with taxpayer subsidies to boot. Sounds a hell of a lot more like corporate welfare than socialism.

I can't blame Obama too much for that, because he seemed to be resigned to just putting over what he believed that he could. And, given how this measure has been getting by on the skin of its teeth, he was probably right.

What's really needed is single-payer -- a system that will get most of the profit motive out of medicine. People are evil enough that nothing will purge the system of that entirely, but a public option that anybody could take would attract millions (including me), and would eventually put private, for-profit insurers out of business.

Mainstream News Media fail pretty often at informing a fundamentally stupid public about some of this. Much hay is made of Medicare fraud, but there isn't much publicity about the fact that Medicare's administrative expenses are generally lower than those found among private insurers. Here's a link to PolitiFact -- let me warn that I don't set much of a factual store by them, but even they concede a "half" truth here.

I had high hopes for single-payer just a couple of years ago, because the health care system in the U.S. is going to get worse, not better, and "Obamacare" is just patchwork. It doesn't really address the fundamental problem of medicine for profit.

But, I'll repeat, the Supreme Court stood by Citizens United on Monday for a second time, striking down Montana's century-old campaign finance law. Until that shitty decision is revisited, big money will win most of the political battles in the U.S., and that includes almost anything to do with health care. What's "left" of the left will be doing well to preserve most of Obamacare for the next 20 years.

Now, after this ruling, it probably won't require a constitutional amendment to make single-payer a reality here. But it WILL require a quantum leap in the general civic intelligence of Americans.

I won't be holding my breath.

But meanwhile, I'm enjoying the fact that Scalia is probably having a bad night. May he have many, many more.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

'Citizens United' Ruling May Be Much Worse Than Strikedown Of 'Obamacare'

By Manifesto Joe

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to reject Montana's case challenging Citizens United. This could actually be a death knell for democracy in America, and something much worse than a high court strikedown of "Obamacare," which could come Thursday.

Tossing the health care law could actually work in the Democratic Party's favor, and even result in some kind of single-payer system in the foreseeable future. Well, I'll amend that to say that it could have had that effect. Since the "justices" essentially ruled yesterday that government entities can be bought by the highest bidder, even the broad public outrage that will inevitably result from a strikedown on Thursday will run up against an iron wall of corporate money.

In America, we can kiss democracy goodbye, at least for the foreseeable future. It's a plutocracy now, and there's no doubt.

I always thought things were going to have to get worse here before they can get better. Now, we're going to see them get a LOT worse, and it will probably be a generation or two before anything can really be done about it.

We saw with the Equal Rights Amendment how a very determined and well-funded minority can thwart the will of a solid majority in this country. It takes a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress to send a proposed constitutional amendment to state legislatures, and then three-fourths of the legislatures have to approve the amendment for it to become law. The Equal Rights Amendment looked like a no-brainer for a while. But it was stalled, and eventually "lost."

If the same 5-4 right-wing majority of justices votes to overturn "Obamacare" on Thursday, it would probably take a constitutional amendment to establish something to the effect of Medicare-E (Medicare for everybody).

Now, with yesterday's decision, we might as well sit back and wait for the next glacier to move through. I had high hopes for single-payer just a couple of years ago, but the corporate money will likely be too much for any groundswell in this country to defeat. Now my generation will not see single-payer, of that I'm all but certain.

Problem is, a constitutional amendment for reasonable campaign finance reform in the U.S. will have to be enacted first. Health care would have to follow, and it's going to take an enormous groundswell of public will to get rid of Citizens United first.

I'll be 56 next month, and so this probably guarantees that I'm going to be writing a blog for the losing side of American politics for the rest of my days. That takes a lot of the joy out of it. But many of us will carry on -- I've got nothing better to do with my spare time. Just get ready for at least 20 more years of The New Gilded Age.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

'Tres Hombres' Inside Album Art

ZZ Top's Tres Hombres (1973) was a fantastic album, but the inside art made it even better. Yum!


An afterthought: One thing I always wondered about was -- how could those dudes keep their beards out of the food? -- mj

America The Stupid, Part 2

I can't say that I've always agreed with everything I've ever heard come out of Gore Vidal's mouth, or with everything that he's written. But, sadly, I think he's got the American people pegged quite well. This is a 2008 interview with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman:



The past 12 years have done more to convince me of an epidemic of American stupidity than all of the previous 44 years I've been alive. Is it something in the water? -- mj

Postscript: The secondary videos are good, too. Look for the interview he did with Joy Behar, apparently around 2010.

America The Stupid

For the past day or so, I've been listening to people wringing their hands about why Wisconsin voters would have voted to keep Gov. Scott Walker in office in a recall election.

Watch this video, and there should be no more room for doubt. It's the unspoken truth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6r1IcY1pv0



Americans are stupid!

Please watch the related videos, too, if you have time. Even the Fox News one is unintentionally funny. (The shopping is fantastic!) -- MJ

10 Biggest Lies Of The Right Wing

By Manifesto Joe

About 40 years ago, a neocon named Arnold Beichman, (1913-2010) a man who pretty much spent his life being an anti-communist crusader, wrote and published a book called Nine Lies About America. At the end of his life he was a research fellow for the Hoover Institution and a columnist for the then-Moonie-financed Washington Times. The man had started out as a Columbia grad and journalist for publications such as PM and Newsweek, so he seemed to keep increasingly bad company as he aged.

When Nine Lies was published, around 1972, the Western world's left wing was admittedly engaged in some excesses that lefties have lived to regret over the years. So, there may have been some reason for the wide popularity of this book.

But from what I've seen since that book came out, while I was still in high school, the Western world's right wing has arguably become even more excessive, promulgating what I refer to in the title of this essay. Here are 10 lies of the right wing, categorized by subject:

Poverty

I have spent much of my nearly 56 years on this planet being relatively poor (you know, by American standards), so I know something about this firsthand. To hear right-wingers tell it, being poor is mostly a self-inflicted wound. One's advancement up the economic ladder is mainly a question of individual self-improvement, deferment of gratification, and so on.

These are certainly important considerations and traits. But anyone who has worked in the corporate world for any significant length of time has surely seen plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Humans are pack animals, and that holds true in the workplace. Bosses often tend to make decisions about promotions more according to personality than performance. Then, as observed by Dr. Laurence J. Peter, co-author of the famous 1969 book The Peter Principle, the promoted toady tends to advance to what finally becomes his or her level of incompetence -- and stays there, generally to screw things up for years and years.

Conversely, Peter observed another phenomenon in the workplace -- the supercompetent underling. This is from Wikipedia:

In addition, Peter suggested the idea of “Super-Competence” in an inappropriately low position. He proposed that this employee will have two paths dependent upon their leadership. Competent People Managers will promote this employee for the betterment of the company. Incompetent People Managers will most likely feel intimidated and/or threatened by this employee. This employee is a disruption to their perceived natural order and will almost certainly drive them to set this employee up for failure and/or dismiss them. Organizations with poor leadership cannot handle this type of disruption to their hierarchical structure. A Super-Competent employee “…violates the first commandment of hierarchical life with incompetent leadership: [namely that] the hierarchy must be preserved…”

From what I've seen, this employee is highly competent and intelligent, but doesn't usually "suck up." The person's stellar performance is not rewarded, and managers will actually resort to making things up to either hold them down or, preferably, fire them.

In America, the "social safety net" is so porous and flimsy that losing a job means almost certain poverty, at least in relative terms, for most people to whom this happens.

There are also factors such as catastrophic illnesses, and of course the sheer luck of the draw at birth. I've seen "well-born" people do all kinds of things like flunk or drop out of college, lose job after job, get busted, etc., then finally clean up their act and start taking advantage of opportunities by the time they are 30 or so.

If, on the other hand, a person is not "well-born" but instead has "losers" for parents, that person usually can't afford to blow one, not even one, of the rare opportunities life will present to them at a tender age. If they do, by the time they are 30, it's usually far too late. Such people rarely have second chances.

In short, the right wing's depiction of poverty and its causes is pretty much a lie.

Welfare

In the 1990s, when I was in a shop, a clerk who had apparently been reading books by Rush Limbaugh, and taking them seriously, tried to tell me that since 1965, the U.S. had spent $6 trillion on welfare. I told him he was sadly mistaken. He started trying to find a passage in that silly book. It was taking too long, so I just left with my merchandise.

Later I realized where Limbaugh, or some other right-wing demagogue, had come up with that figure and was getting the rubes to believe it. He was including ALL federal social spending since 1965, which would include Social Security (which operates not like welfare, but rather like an insurance policy), Medicare, Medicaid, and all others.

When somebody says "welfare" to me, I think of the program called Aid to Families With Dependent Children, which was actually a very small and restricted program that was in operation from 1935 to 1996. That year, Congress replaced it with the program that is now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

For the sake of brevity, I won't delve into whether what Molly Ivins famously called the "welfare deform" of 1996 was a good idea, dependence, unwed motherhood, and such. I'm sticking to the unfortunate fact that millions of ignorant Americans believe that the federal government has blown trillions of dollars on "welfare."

In 1996, spending on AFDC peaked at $24 billion. Even if you presumed that the government spent that much in real dollars in each of those years since 1965 -- and it damn sure didn't -- multiply that times 30, and what you get is $720 billion, a far cry from the alleged $6 trillion.

These are lying assholes, and they lie deliberately to gullible rubes.

Health Care

The right has been persistently lying about this for many decades to keep the U.S. from "socializing" medicine. They consistently invoke "free market" arguments on this issue.

Even if one presumes the superiority of "free markets" -- and that's a big presumption -- health care has never met the "free market" model. When you are sick, do you get to shop around for ambulance services or hospitals, like some Arab trader? Ultimately, I don't even get to choose my own doctors. They have to belong to the "network" that my private insurance covers.

The invocation of "free market" arguments on health care has been one of the right's most pernicious and toxic lies, for it has resulted in the denial of affordable health care to millions upon millions of Americans. They don't even tell you that you often end up paying higher taxes and premiums, anyway, because uninsured people go to charity hospitals for care.

Health care doesn't meet the criteria of the "free market" model, and it never has. They lie, and lie, and lie some more.

Say's Law

This is still a staple of classical economic theory, and it's the biggest crock of bullshit in the right-wing economist's arsenal. It is, in short, that supply creates its own demand.

My understanding is that one of the major causes of the Great Depression was that supply simply outstripped the capacity of consumer demand to absorb it. Wall Street could afford to keep factories producing ever-greater numbers of cars, but Main Street was falling behind and couldn't afford the payments. So, inventory stacked up, people got laid off, they could afford even less, and a vicious downward economic cycle was set into motion.

In recent years, we've seen similar things, to wit in what we now call the Great Recession. There's no problem with productivity -- the U.S. economy doubled in size since 1980. Problem was, wages and salaries were stagnant, so people either couldn't buy what they were producing or had to go deeply into debt to afford the stuff.

It's time to put Say's Law on the ash heap of history, where it belongs. But it remains as a lie on the pages of economics textbooks.

The Invisible Hand

You know this one -- Adam Smith's amazing self-correcting capitalist economy. Problem is, it only works when you have a lot of competitors in a given sector, few barriers to entry, and honest price competition. Absent those things, there's a reason why the hand is invisible -- it probably isn't there.

Oh, but sometimes it is. I've felt that invisible hand a few times. Always felt more like a fist to me.

Jail

I recall having an argument with a person who was working in some area of law enforcement. The person was basically in favor of putting each and every lawbreaker in prison and throwing away the key. The person was also in favor of making prisons a lot tougher. They were supposed to be too much like country clubs.

I've never been in prison myself, but I've known a few people who have been there, and none of them ever described it like any country club you'd want to belong to. They are nasty, ugly places, with many cell blocks actually run by the worst prisoners themselves while corrupt guards turn a blind eye. The word "punk" originated from the term for kids who were forced to submit regularly to sodomy by older and tougher convicts.

OK, suppose we've settled the matter that prison isn't a place where any sane person wants to go. The U.S. has nearly 2.3 million adults incarcerated. Taxpayers are already paying to have 1% of all American adults in some sort of jail. Can one seriously think that they are going to pay more? Here's a link to a Wikipedia article on the subject.

Then there is a basic human-rights issue involved here. When you put a person in jail, even for a night, you have taken away this person's freedom. I don't know how you think of that where you're from, but to me that's always seemed like a pretty big deal. To a sane person, the burden of proof seems to be on society as a whole. Society had better have a damn good reason to deprive me of freedom and levy fines -- not just because I chose to smoke something other than tobacco.

Capital punishment

The idea that it deters crime hasn't borne up historically, and now, in the age of DNA testing, we're finding that it probably has led to the execution of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people.

But even presuming guilt, does a person about to commit murder think in sane terms about deterrence? Would they do it if they didn't think they could get away with it?

As Gallagher says, it don't make no sense.

American exceptionalism

This, again, is from Wikipedia:

Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense. To them, the United States is like the biblical "shining city on a hill," and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries.

Since the 1960s, postnationalist scholars have rejected American exceptionalism, arguing that the United States had not broken from European history, and has retained class inequities, imperialism and war. Furthermore, they see most nations as subscribing to some form of exceptionalism.

With the events of recent years, the proponents of "American exceptionalism" are finding out the hard way that our Japanese, Chinese and Russian competitors regard it as nonsense.

War

A man I knew in the 1980s presented to me the extraordinary idea that war is often a very good thing. He explained to me that his parents met because of World War II, and besides, sometimes you need a war once in a while so that bad elements of society can be eliminated -- as though criminal types are the only people who get killed in wars.

At the time, I was practically speechless. If I heard that man repeat this today, I'd urge him to go visit the nearest VA hospital and take a good look at the basket cases. He might also want to visit a homeless shelter and look at all the amputees, many of whom would not have survived past conflicts. Nearly half of veterans returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are filing disability claims, promising an enormous burden on the taxpayers of the future.

It's never been worth it. And, it's a monstrous lie.

"Socialism"

Most right-wingers don't even seem to have a clear understanding of what socialism is.

All dictionary definitions refer to it as an economic system in which the MEANS OF PRODUCTION is predominantly owned either by the government or cooperatives, not by private concerns.

To right-wingers, the criterion is "redistribution of wealth." I have news for them. Every time government, at any level, taxes and appropriates money for projects of any kind, wealth is redistributed. It is strictly a question of to whom. They seem to object only when the beneficiaries are relatively poor, not when they are rich. In the latter case, it's viewed as "smart business."

I suppose it's a lot like Stephen Colbert's definition: A socialist is anybody who wants to spend government money on something you don't like.

Well, that's 10 lies, I believe. Until next time ...

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

This Memorial Day, No Millionaire Left Behind

U.S. disparity of income is setting records by some measures

It's 2012 -- the financial crisis happened over four years ago, and the Great Recession is supposed to have been over long ago. After all this time, the American people, or at least the ones with the most juice, don't seem to have learned a thing.

Corporate profits hit record levels in 2011, and with that increase, compensation for CEOs went up about 6% as well. The CEO of a typical public company made (off with) $9.6 million in 2011, as CEO pay was largely in the form of stock awards tied to "performance."

For more particulars about this report, here's a link to an online story in The Seattle Times.

The way some fools have spun this is that shareholder activists can claim a victory of sorts, because the corporate boards aren't just shoveling over as much "pay for pulse" as they once did. More of CEO compensation is tied to "performance," in the form of higher profits.

The U.S. business press, in its usual myopia, does not perceive the hideous structural problem that this represents. The CEOs making a killing now, it appears, are the ones who run their corporations in such a way as to squeeze the maximum profit from American consumers that they possibly can. Bleed them white, milk them dry, and you get more stock awards!

The shareholders are then happy, I suppose. But what of the consumers? Do those schmucks even matter? It would appear that they matter only to the extent that they pay up, to the max -- even if they have to go heavily into debt. And then, of course, the banking companies can own their very souls. It's like a modern version of the company store.

The Seattle story did touch upon the fundamental problem here:

CEOs managed to sell more, and squeeze more profit from each sale, despite problems ranging from a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating to an economic slowdown in China and Europe's debt crisis.

Still, there wasn't much immediate benefit for shareholders. The S&P 500 ended the year unchanged from where it started.

Including dividends, the index returned a slender 2 percent. ...

And the main concern of many shareholders -- that pay is just too much, no matter what the form -- has yet to be addressed.

"It's just that total (compensation) is going up, and that's where the problem lies," says Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

The typical American worker would have to labor for 244 years to make what the typical boss of a big public company makes in one. The median pay for U.S. workers was about $39,300 last year. That was up 1 percent from the year before, not enough to keep pace with inflation.

The main problem is that, even after the sobering experiences of a financial crisis CAUSED by the misconduct of financial institutions themselves, and the Great Recession, the U.S. economy continues to grow top-heavy, prolonging a disturbing (and for most people, painful) trend that's been going on since the late '70s and early '80s.

An illustration of the dilemma lies in a labor anecdote involving UAW legend Walter Reuther (1907-70). A Detroit automaker wheel was showing Reuther the new robots that could perform tasks on the assembly lines.

"Let's see you try to get one of these robots to join your union," the wheel told Reuther with amusement.

Reuther's reply: "Let's see you try to get one of these robots to buy one of your cars."

The further these predators keep pushing ordinary Americans into debt, and the less they pay them, eventually the ordinary schmucks can't afford car payments, or fall behind on them. Then what happens to profits -- and then ultimately, CEO compensation?

A pungent Japanese observation about U.S. corporations is that they think in terms of the next 10 minutes (well, perhaps the coming quarter), while in Japan they think in terms of the next 10 years. Popular depictions are that the Japanese economy hasn't fared well in recent years -- but still, it might be wise to start thinking, as they do, more long-term. Their CEOs certainly don't make even remotely what their American counterparts do, and they pay their common workers comparatively well. They can't claim to have achieved utopia, but their way may ultimately prove more sustainable, long-term, than ours.

In any case, it should be clear by now to "the 99 percent" that what we've got going on here -- capitalism reverted back to its most primitive and cannibalistic forms -- can't go on much longer.

As a parting Memorial Day thought, I suppose there are plenty of "patriotic" Republican types out there who will be honoring those who died, and who returned as basket cases, (please check out this link) on and from the deserts and mountains of the Middle East. Yeah -- they got shot to pieces and blown up so that corporate CEOs could rake in $9.6 mil a year, buy their Montecristo cigars by the box and their single-malt Scotch by the case. Such sacrifice.

Postscript: I forgot to mention that two-thirds of U.S. corporations are effectively paying no income tax. Perhaps these patriots could ante up a little better, given all the glorious profits they are making, so that we could cut that deficit!

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Fracking Could Turn Much Of America Into A Wasteland

By Manifesto Joe

They've already seen a lot of this in rural areas -- the dumping of industrial waste, the fouling of well water, the loss of bucolic hills and trees. But it's not something that just happens in sparsely populated rural areas anymore. It's come to the city.

"Fracking" -- the hydraulic fracturing technique of drilling for fossil fuels -- is now an urban phenomenon. My wife and I live in a large city, and we've got fracking wells less than half a mile from where we live, and in two different directions.

There's still much debate going on about the side effects of this technique, with the Environmental Protection Agency right in the middle. Where we live, what they're exploring for is mainly natural gas, and the gas industry denies any effect on drinking water, and any significant pollution in general.

I've noticed very strong petroleum-like odors in our neighborhood when drilling activity is hot. Also, we've got a large holding pond next to a gas field that's not too far from our house. I haven't noticed any of the neighborhood children trying to go skinny-dipping in that thing.

I suspect that the people who live next to that holding pond have seen their property values plummet, probably far more than any perks they got from selling their subsurface mineral rights. ... Which brings me to another topic.

My wife and I were among the last "holdouts" in our neighborhood. We ignored the landmen for a couple of years, and were getting all sorts of offers in the mail. There's a certain economic logic to this, because we ended up getting about twice as much for our mineral rights as did the schmucks who took the first offer they got.

I wasn't happy about the idea of having gas drilling this close to where I live, anyway. But in Texas, the way I understand the laws governing mineral rights, if you are the last SOB standing in the way of a company's extraction of fossil fuels -- well, in essence, they can just TAKE it from you. If all your neighbors have signed on -- and I know that ours did -- the company has the law on its side to just run right over you.

So, after a long holdout, we signed a lease. Now I almost wish I hadn't done it, since some unpleasant facts about the side effects of "fracking" are coming out.

I don't know very much about the technical end of this, but some areas of America are seeing some very ugly sides of the "fracking" bonanza. Truthout has been doing a lot of good reporting on the subject. Here's a link to one of their most recent posts on this.

A few years into the boom, we're finally seeing city councils and neighborhood associations getting concerned and involved, but in many ways it's far too late. The Trojan Horse, so to speak, is already in the city. I can't understand where a lot of these whiners were when the gas company landmen were tossing all that money around.

There have been serious, lethal explosions result from gas drilling. We're having earthquakes happen all over Texas now, in places that never had them before. People are reporting well water that they can set on fire with a lit match. But to hear the companies tell it, this is all nonsense.

You see, it's common knowledge that rural Texas is rife with rabble-rousing Marxists who live to destroy the lush fruits of unbridled capitalism. They are all making this stuff up, just because they hate to see anybody making a profit.

Well, it's not just in the country anymore. City slickers have gas wells nearby, too. I look at a couple of sites every time I drive to work.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

More Computer Problems -- Hope To Be Back Very Soon

Joe's suspicious that new contributor Geekus Maleekus had something to do with this. He's a confessed computer saboteur.

Hope to have this issue resolved by next week. Hang in there, loyalists! -- MJ

With Slick Willard, Republicans Are About To Nominate Thurston Howell The Third For President

By Manifesto Joe

I confess to being a little stunned when I read what Slick Willard Romney's advice was for young Americans struggling with the job market: Take risks, and don't be shy about borrowing money from your parents.

Um, it's a great big world out there, Willard, and not everybody has a trust fund. What if your parents are dead, or what if they are actually worse off than you are?

The slick one's example was Jimmy John of the renowned sandwich chain, who he said borrowed $20,000 from his parents and started a swell new business that's now a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Like wow, Willard! If my parents had ever had $20,000 to lend me, I could have gone to an Ivy League school and become part of the elite, too! Forget about the entrepreneurship, let's go with what's tried and tested and proven. One of those Harvard or Yale degrees can get you a pretty far piece, from what I've seen.

Another example, one that Slick Willard's wife was supposed to have brought up in an old interview, was that Slick sold some stocks that Daddsy bought for him so that he and wifey could live while they were college students.

Man, too bad I couldn't have sold my stock and traded it in for a meal ticket at the college cafeteria! But, man does not live by Frito pie alone.

To turn more serious, what keeps coming up here is Slick Willard's total disengagement from how the vast majority of people, even reasonably affluent Americans, have to live. From what I've read, Daddsy George had his ups and downs as a youth, and had to do a bit of his share of ass-busting to get ahead in life. But it doesn't appear that he communicated any of this to Sonny Mitt.

I'm not completely confident about this situation, because the American people were stupid enough to "elect" Il Doofus, and his daddy, too. But Romney seems to have a total disconnect with life as it has to be lived by us commoners. The Republicans will nominate him at their own peril.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Geekus Doesn't Get Why Dogs Have Become A Big Campaign Issue

By G.M.

Dudes and dude-ettes, don't get me wrong. It's not like I don't love dogs. I have one for breakfast every day! (Just kidding, PETA fanatics!)

But like, now, all of a sudden, dogs are a big deal in this presidential campaign. Mitt Romney apparently strapped one in on the roof of his car when he was on vacation, then freaked out when brown seep started coming down on his windshield. Like, you couldn't have figured on that happening, after 14 hours?

And then, the Republicans found something in Obama's book about his younger life in which he says he ate stuff like dog and grasshoppers and such, at the urging of his Indonesian stepdad. Dog was sort of tough, and he reported that the grasshoppers are a little crunchy.

Please, please, people, get a life. An 8-year-old kid is going to eat anything that Daddy puts in front of him. As for Mitt Romney, that didn't sound too good, but a common thing among rednecks (yes, they have them in the North, too) is that they don't regard animals as similar to people in any way. You know, like, they're just these idiot things with absolutely no feelings. But, it's not like Mitt would be the first presidential hopeful who ever had that attitude about stuff. There must have been plenty of others. How else could you get elected? -- GM

For Geekus Maleekus, One More Boring Saturday Night

By G.M.

Dudes and dude-ettes, things just aren't what they used to be here on Planet Grapevine, especially on Saturday nights.

I used to be able to score lots of bitchin weed, but my source got busted, so now I have to settle for MD 20/20. Bummer.

The politics and shit used to be more interesting, too. I used to get cracked up when Bush would say all those stupid things. We just don't have any good fools to put on Wolf Blitzer's TV show anymore.

I mean, look at the people who are going to end up running for president. Obama is just too fucking polished. Everything he says sounds like he's practically had a chance to see video of it first. And then there's Mitt, the Arrow shirt dude. I used to enjoy watching those debates, back when it looked like Al Gore was actually walking over to Bush and acting like he was going to start punching him out and shit. The debates between these two, this fall, are going to be, like, serious yawners. No good sound bites, no UFC action, nothing.

Ron Paul sometimes acts like he's going to start some kind of shit, but he's too old and wimpy. When he gets excited, his voice gets as high as my grandma's. And Newt's just too fat. The only kind of fight he could win would be as the captain of the GOP Eating Team.

Clinton was fun to have around, because you never knew who it would come out that he'd porked. I don't remember times being so bad while he was president. I could get plenty of good weed back then, and Wolf Blitzer's show was always a lot more interesting, at least if you were stoned. But Clinton's not on the tube much anymore, and Hillary just isn't up to being a summer replacement. That woman was just too set on being valedictorian of every fucking thing to be very interesting. Although, it was funny to see her swilling a brewski and cutting up down in South America. That was the most fun I've ever seen Hillary have.

Ted Nugent used to be a bitchin guitar hero, but he's too redneck now. And way too serious.

Another boring Saturday night on Planet Grapevine. -- GM

Introducing Joe's New Contributor: Geekus Maleekus

By G.M.

Hey, dudes. I guess I'd better introduce myself. I don't spell too good, but Joe takes care of that for me.

I was born in 1976 in Grapevine, Texas. I graduated from high school with a 2.01 GPA. I was high most of the time, but I do remember seeing that movie of Hamlet with Mel Gibson. At least I didn't have to read the fucking Shakespeare book. Mel's pretty cool, as long as he stays off those Christian snuff movies. It was pretty boring watching that Jesus dude getting fucked over, hours upon hours.

I got an associate's degree in computer science from the local community college. Worked for a while as a tech, fixing PCs, then got fired. Moved back in with Mom and Dad, and spent most of my unemployment checks on piercings and tattoos. Everybody says they're most cool.

I know how to do computer viruses and other cool shit like that. I will gladly fuck up your computer Tuesday for a hamburger today.

More later, dudes. -- GM

Why Isn't Ted Nugent In Jail Now?

By Manifesto Joe

I don't seriously believe that Ted Nugent ought to be in jail now, because that would confer on him martyr status that he doesn't deserve.

But it's a question to ponder, since the heavy-metal bad boy turned NRA poster boy seems to have threatened the president of the United States during time of war.

Columnist LZ Granderson of CNN.com put it this way:

Nugent's words were: "If Barack Obama is elected, I'll either be dead or in jail this time next year," which sounds to me like he's open to directing his disapproval of Obama in a way that is violent and unlawful. When you see that statement next to Nugent comparing Obama and his colleagues to coyotes that needed to be shot, as well as the need to "ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November," I don't see how that rant cannot be looked upon as a threat on the president's life.

Here's a link to the entire commentary.

Not much has generally happened to people in cases like this before. But it's worth noting that in 2007, a federal judge refused to throw out a case in which an Indian national was alleged to have urged the assassination of then-President George W. Bush and threatened other administration officials. Here's a link to that story.

In that case, Vikram Buddhi was sentenced to 57 months in prison.

Perhaps as scandalous as the double standard that may lurk here is the wishy-washy response from Slick Willard Romney's presidential campaign. Nugent has endorsed Slick Willard despite the latter's support for an assault-weapons ban while he was governor of Massachusetts. Nugent explained that at the time, Romney wasn't in America, he was in Massachusetts.

"Divisive language is offensive no matter what side of the political aisle it comes from," said Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul. "Mitt Romney believes everyone needs to be civil."

Here's a link to a Washington Post commentary, with more detail on exactly what Nugent said.

Again, I wouldn't want Nugent to have the kind of martyr status he would have if he's charged with a crime over his remarks. But it may be a question worth pondering.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Allen West Proves That Joe McCarthy Still Lives!

By Manifesto Joe

Preface: Glad to be back online. Was down with PC issues for over a month. What has the experience taught me? I'll summarize. Outsourcing is one of the most evil and STOOPID things Corporate America ever did, especially where computers are concerned. You people may have thought you were being smart, getting foreign help on the cheap, but it's ended up costing you. There are plenty of Americans who need jobs, and outsourcing just ends up costing the big boys lots of money through poor customer service. But: People don't like to admit when they've made mistakes, and therefore many corporations are still stubbornly pushing ahead with their bad past decisions. Dudes and dude-ettes, it was a monumental fuckup! Please, please, admit it, at long last. And most importantly, CHANGE.

Now, on to the subject.

Rep. Allen West, R-Florida, is a freshman lawmaker who is also a Tea Party poster child. He alleges that somewhere around 80 House Democrats are communists.

Even the actual communists themselves thought that this was absurdly moronic. Here's a link to what they had to say about this:

Click here!

I may be dating myself here -- I'm 55, going on 56 years old. Joe McCarthy was even before my time -- he died of a pickled liver when I was about a year old. But old Joe cast an enormous shadow over Cold War politics of the era. The consensus of hindsight is that, no, he wasn't wrong about EVERYTHING. There was a certain amount of Soviet espionage that reached some higher levels of the U.S. government. (My wife had an uncle who worked for the CIA, and from what he said, it's not like this wasn't working two ways.)

But, McCarthy's foolish allegations were always empty of evidence, and they were always changing. Was it 205 commies in the State Department? Or was it 57? How about 81? He was tossing enough numbers around to have a fair chance at winning the Mega Millions.

The astonishing thing here is that, well over 20 years after the end of the Cold War, we have a fool in the U.S. House who is enough of a shithead to re-enact the follies of Joe McCarthy.

One of the disheartening things about the contemporary U.S. political scene is that we DON'T have any significant radical left here anymore. I've never been much of a joiner, so I'm not a person who could ever be counted in. But given what's been happening in U.S. society at large for over three decades, and especially what's been happening since 2001, there damned sure ought to be a lot more firey, ready-for-battle types out there. The "Occupy" movement is the closest thing we've seen to that, and it seems to be in a nadir right now.

There are no Vito Marcantonios in Congress right now. Bernie Sanders says he's a socialist, "little s," and he's the closest thing we have. And it was questionable that even an old lefty like Vito was a real commie. People speculated that he was, but I don't think there was ever any solid evidence.

What we're seeing here is the electability of right-wing half-wits to high office. Not that the far, far left has never had any half-wits, but when was the last time you heard of one of them getting elected to truly high office? (And please, right-wing kooks, don't suggest Obama. The far left doesn't claim him, and never has. Anybody who thinks Obama is a "socialist" doesn't know what one is. Plus, if you think that a constitutional scholar like Obama is some kind of village idiot, what does that suggest about you?)

No, there are no Marcantonios -- but, it would appear, plenty of Joe McCarthys. Allen West proves that Tail Gunner Joe lives!

A postscript -- I'm going to miss Sanitarium!

Not that there was ever any doubt in my mind that the dude is batshit crazy -- but the Republican show is going to be much more boring without Sanitarium. On a purely personal level, he was always a much more engaging candidate than Slick Willard, the guy who forever reminds you of that well-groomed little Sunday School boy that everybody detested. Rick's demented, but he always came across like a regular guy who actually believed all that far-right Catholic bullshit.

It's going to be a much duller "race" without Sanitarium.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

On Vacation, Courtesy Of My PC

I can't do much posting for a while. My PC is down, and it may be down for a couple more weeks. Thanks to all who visit the blog, and please don't give up on me. I expect to be back by the end of the month.

One thing I have learned from this experience -- don't trust ANYTHING that computer geeks tell you. From three different ones, you can get three entirely different stories (and I did). Oh, and never buy anything from Dell.

Plan to be back ASAP. -- mj

Has Herr Rush Lardbaugh Finally Overreached?

For the first few days since the scandal broke, I wasn't inclined to post about it for one simple reason. Herr Lardbaugh has pulled these kinds of stunts before, and after initial firestorms has consistently gotten away with them.

This time, it looks like he may not. Or might he? As of the latest count, five sponsors have withdrawn sponsorship, and two others have "suspended" ads on Herr Lardbaugh's radio show. The Christian Science Monitor identifies them:

Departing sponsors include LegalZoom, ProFlowers, Citrix, Sleep Number beds, and Carbonite. Others, including AOL and Tax Resolution Services, have “suspended” their advertising on the show. Sears, AutoZone and Allstate have all said they do not sponsor Mr. Limbaugh’s show and advertisements for the companies that appeared on the program were placed there by mistake.

The Monitor has a succinct passage about the controversy, just in case you the reader don't have the particulars:

Limbaugh got the controversy started last Wednesday when he impugned Georgetown University’s Sandra Fluke on the air, calling her a “slut” and a “prostitute” after she appeared before a congressional committee arguing that her school’s health coverage should include birth control. Limbaugh later in the week insisted that the public should have access to video of her sexual encounters in exchange for the alleged funding of her birth control.

The comments struck many as extraordinarily crass, even for Limbaugh, who frequently makes derisive ad hominem attacks against those he disagrees with. A boycott movement quickly took root, spreading across online communities on sites like Reddit and Facebook, and the strong reaction against Limbaugh inspired seven sponsors to pull ads.

Some in the business think that Clear Channel will quickly pick up new advertisers as long as Herr Lardbaugh remains a bankable media figure. But this time seems a bit more serious than past incidents. Herr Lardbaugh said at first that he was only trying to be funny, and he's apologized to Ms. Fluke twice. But his apologies don't seem to be having any effect, as the controversy rages on days later.

It's not that ad hominem attacks are so shocking and awful. I'm doing that to Herr Lardbaugh right now, by making fun of his name and his usual girth.

But what Herr Lardbaugh did this time was quite unfunny, and went well beyond the boundaries of reasonable attempts at politically partisan humor. I've gotten in trouble in the past doing things as crass as making fun of genocide victims, but even I wouldn't subject a person as loathsome as Herr Lardbaugh to these kinds of attacks.

This time, it looks like he may not get away with it. His show will probably continue, but it's looking a lot like the description in the speech that Walter Matthau's character gives to Andy Griffith's "Lonesome Rhodes" near the end of the 1957 movie A Face in the Crowd. It's never going to be quite the same.

It's happened to a few other media figures before. Dr. Laura Schlessinger was riding high for years, until she finally said a few things that were just too stupid. And, how much of a career has Don Imus had in recent years?

It's true that Herr Lardbaugh's listening audience far eclipses those of either the I-Man or Dr. Laura. But he's human, and he's been skating by through shit storms like this for many years. This time, he may finally be taken down.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

'The Artist:' Yet Another Reason The Oscars Can't Be Taken Seriously

By Manifesto Joe

Over the past year, I've actually seen five of the nine films that were nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. In the 1980s I was a devoted film buff and even aspired to be a critic, but in recent years I've lost interest, in large part because the Hollywood product has become such recycled pablum.

But again, over the past year, I've gotten out to the local cinemas a bit more. There are no "art houses" close to where I live, so for economic reasons I've mostly had to settle for the commercial Hollywood product with the discounts that area theaters provide.

I thought The Artist was a fun and entertaining novelty film, and Uggie the Dog's performance made me want to adopt a Jack Russell terrier.

But, Best Picture? Come off it. This is A Star Is Born with a happy ending tacked on. I regarded The Help and The Descendants as better films, and considered Midnight in Paris and Hugo to be at least as good, perhaps better.

What one tends to see on Oscar night is essentially a popularity contest held among the Academy's voters. Trendiness counts, and if a film such as The Artist offers something that people haven't seen in a while (black-and-white cinematography, a silent movie with titles), it has a leg up on its rivals.

Let's consider, briefly, a history of how much "Oscar" has meant over the years. Citizen Kane is at the top of many critics' all-time-great lists, and it didn't win Best Picture of 1941, though it was nominated.

What were some of the winning "Best Pictures?" Let's see -- we have Love Story (1970), which nobody wants to see anymore, and then the "immortal" tearjerker Terms of Endearment (1983). The latter's victory at the Oscars was when I really stopped taking the Academy Awards very seriously. What those two movies had in common was that audiences hadn't seen old-time tearjerkers in a long while, so those who hadn't grown up watching the old Douglas Sirk melodramas from the 1950s on little black-and-white TVs were often seeing something brand-new to them.

"Best actors?" I don't remember the last time I saw F. Murray Abraham, and Roberto Benigni's career certainly hasn't gone anywhere in recent years.

Somewhat in contrast, Val Kilmer doesn't look like he used to, but he's still getting parts. I thought one of the biggest ripoffs in Oscar history was that he wasn't even nominated for Best Actor for his work in The Doors (1991), in which he seemed to have disinterred the dude from that Paris grave for his performance as Jim Morrison. But Val has a rep for being difficult and isn't popular in Hollywood. (Director John Frankenheimer, before his death, was quoted as saying that one of the things he would never again do in his life was work with Val Kilmer. He had directed Kilmer and Marlon Brando in a very forgettable version of The Island of Dr. Moreau.)

Bottom line -- it's just a popularity contest among U.S. film industry insiders. I can't afford the gasoline and ticket prices to be a "movie snob" anymore, but Oscar night usually makes me wish I could be one again.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Cletis Stump's GOP Laws Of Power

Cletis Stump is a good buddy who's got a fine blog going (See Joe's Hot Links, The Book of Cletis). Here's a recent post:

The GOP Laws of Power

~ The 1st GOP Law of Power: "The reduction of government services will be met with an
equivalent increase of corporate control."

~ The 2nd Law GOP of Power: "Always praise Jesus as your lord and savior when cameras are
rolling, otherwise kneel before Mammon."

~ The 3d GOP Law of Power: "When beating the war drum, stress the desire to aid those
yearning to be free; never mention their oil."

~ The 4th GOP Law of Power: "Stress patriotism and at all times brand those who oppose our
wars of imperialism as socialist agitators"

~ The 5th GOP Law of Power: "Never credit President Obama; deflect the praise when it is
brought forth and quickly reference his Muslim father."

~ The 6th GOP Law of Power: "In an election year, back off of any aspect of our agenda the
electorate has questioned and change the subject."

~ The 7th GOP Law of Power: "When caught in a lie and all attempts to ignore the public outcry
have failed, speak only to Fox News."

~ The 8t GOP Law of Power: "As the economy improves, and unemployment declines, feign
outrage over social issues & re engage the culture wars."

~ The 9th GOP Law of Power: "When holding a minority of Senate seats, embrace the filibuster
and pass no legislation favorable to the President."

~ The 10th GOP Law of Power: "When President Obama shows grace and courage and refuses
to engage in Brinkmanship, double down."

I'm Sad To Say Obama Is Pandering On Corporate Tax Cut

By Manifesto Joe

The fundamental dishonesty of the Mainstream Media business press tends to come out at times like this, as President Obama is proposing a cut in the U.S. corporate tax rate, down from the stated "35%" down to 28%. Unfortunately, this is when the fundamental dishonesty of many politicians comes out as well.

The MSM business press, while widely reporting that the current U.S. corporate tax rate of 35% is among the highest in the developed world, fails to report that two-thirds of American corporations aren't even paying it -- or anything at all, effectively. They acknowledge that many corporations, because of loopholes, don't pay an effective rate that high. They fail to report how prevalent, and how widespread, that failure to pay is. It's so bad that two-thirds of them basically pay NOTHING.

Don't believe it? Here's a link.

I can provide many others. Suffice it to say that two-thirds of U.S. corporations, according to numerous studies, have been shown to dodge federal income taxes to such an extent that their effective rate is little or nothing.

What Obama proposes, as I understand it, is to cut the nominal rate from 35% to 28%, with the trade-off of closing a lot of the loopholes that have permitted corporate giants in America to get by year after year paying virtually nothing. Sounds like a reasonable trade-off. I'm a political realist. So, on the surface, it sounds quite pragmatic.

But Obama's plan, again, as I understand it, would introduce a new set of loopholes into the mix, after closing some of them. While additional loopholes, for "green technology" companies and such, may seem like a good idea, it's an idea best left for a time when our federal government can actually AFFORD such breaks.

Granted, one of the nastiest pieces of Republican demagoguery is blaming the current accumulation of national debt on Obama. During Reagan's presidency, the national debt TRIPLED, from about $1 trillion to about $3 trillion. During the absurd "presidency" of Il Doofus, the national debt doubled from about $5 trillion to about $10 trillion while this imbecile was busy doing something that was tantamount to -- well, if FDR had decided to invade Argentina after the Pearl Harbor attack. That's about what the Iraq invasion amounted to, in hindsight.

But now is not the time to introduce any new proposals for loopholes. After 20 or so Republican debates, some of us have a general idea of how batshit crazy most of their "hopefuls" are.

(At the most recent debate, Ron Paul was asked to describe himself in one word. His choice: "Consistent." Yeah. Consistently insane.)

Some of us are looking desperately to the president for leadership. I like the man, but I've been disappointed. I hope to see MORE of the best stuff from him.

Contrary to what Darth Cheney once said, deficits DO matter. America can't afford to run up too much more. As nice as breaks for "green" companies would be, we've come to a time in which all and everyone must ante up.

I understand that Obama is running for re-election, and that he must "dance with them what brung him," as the saying goes in Texas. But now is the time to see statesmanship from him, not pandering. Everyone must share the sacrifice. And that means everyone. Close the loopholes for all, and please, please, don't introduce any new ones.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Jesse Fuller, One-Man Band

I hadn't put a music video up for a while, and this is one I'd been thinking about. Enjoy the great Jesse Fuller!

Rick Perry 'Rearmed, Reloaded' -- Let's Not Forget Retarded

By Manifesto Joe

Forgive me for not resisting the urge to get a few more boot kicks in on a fool who got up on the national stage and made Texans look like buffoons in the bargain. Not that we already didn't look like that to a great extent -- but El Pendejo made it a lot worse.

The reason for my compulsion is that he's back home, and now we have to put up with his moronic ass as governor for nearly three more years.

He's not even ruling out getting his ass kicked again on the national stage. Here's a link to that story. After Reagan and Bush 43, I hadn't thought it was possible for anyone to be too stupid to be the Republican presidential nominee. El Pendejo, and Michele Bachmann as well, seem to have found where the bottom was.

He's back in Austin, ready to do battle in state politics yet again. Isn't it enough of an embarrassment that this dorkus malorkus is now our state's longest-serving governor?

He's not exactly coming back to paradise. A lot of us back here did nothing short of marvel at his talk of the Texas Miracle, and such. Things may be miraculous where he lives, with rent at $9,900 a month. Most of us are trying to figure out how we're going to pay for our next car repair.

El Pendejo did a lot of talking about job creation in Texas, and depicted the state as a capitalist paradise. I suppose that if you're an affluent capitalist, you can carve a certain paradise out of this. You don't have to drive on the rubble that passes for streets, or hear gunshots in your neighborhood, or live next door to people who rely on food stamps to eat and can't afford medical insurance for their children.

Perry represents the class of people who have basically told corporations coast-to-coast that the Texas workforce is a great big whore with legs spread wide. As blogger Robert Ruiz of San Antonio put it in a column:

Essentially our politicians are pimping us out to the lowest bidder. In 2010 Texas tied Mississippi for having more workers earning minimum wage or less than any other state in the country. Some 9.5% of Texas workers earned minimum wage or less compared to a national average of 6%.

Here's a link to a post by Ruiz, who also has much to say about poverty nationally.

People like El Pendejo seem to do an awful lot of talking about "freedom." For the kinds of people he and his spouse have over to dinner, that means the "freedom" of the 1% to fuck over all the rest of us.

But, they have an appalling number of wage-earning slobs fooled. Once, when I was reluctantly in a Wal-Mart, waiting to be checked out, my wife and I were talking to someone, and our checker managed to hear that I work as an editor for an MSM outlet.

I heard him say, "Oh, you mean those biased liberals who suppress dissenting opinions ...?"

I decided that, under the circumstances, it wouldn't be a good idea for me to remark snidely about the general political acumen of Wal-Mart associates. I did mention to him, passing through, that I figured he was probably underpaid. "I can always go somewhere else," was his reply.

My first thought was, why the fuck don't you do just that? What I recall saying was something like, "Yeah, and be a wage slave for somebody else." Yep, he's free alright -- to be a slave who can "choose" masters.

That is a popular opinion in Texas, and seems to be why politicians like El Pendejo just keep getting elected. The people getting screwed seem to want it deeper. For the next three years, they're likely to get it.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Just When It Looked Like Slick Willard Had It Sewn Up ...

By Manifesto Joe

... Sanitarium makes it a race again!

If I had $10,000 handy to bet, the way Slick Willard apparently has, I would still bet on him. I would do so because I think he's where the most of the really big money of the Republican Party is, and will stay.

Boss Hogg still has his pockets of support -- including the very deep pockets of one of the richest players in Vegas, or anywhere in the world, multibillionaire Sheldon Adelson. That will keep him in the campaign for at least a while.

Ron Paul? Fageddaboudit. As one pundit once put it, he reminds too many people of that mentally ill uncle that every family has. He will keep the support of his loyal ideologues, but they won't exceed 10-15% in that many states.

Sanitarium seems to have emerged as a surprisingly strong second-place contender, which shows two things -- how full of surprises the Republicans are this time, and how astonishingly weak their field is. If anybody had told me six months ago that Sanitarium would still even be in this thing now, I'd have thought they were ready to be committed to one (a sanitarium).

My $10,000 wager, as of now, would be on a Slick Willard/Sanitarium ticket. Wall Street is still the Republican Party's 800-pound gorilla, and I think the "smart money" believes that Slick Willard has the best chance to win in November. Sanitarium would be a good No. 2 to reassure and co-opt Tea Party types, fundamentalists, Catholic Falangists and other far-right creatures.

Boss Hogg might have had a good shot at the No. 2 spot earlier, but he's pissed off too many people. Word is among Washington insiders, even "conservatives," that anyone who knows Gingrich very well generally detests him. That's not the type who makes a good, loyal veep.

But, we've seen plenty of twists and turns in this Rethuglican contest, so stay tuned. There may be a few more coming.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.