The GOP Striptease

Last week the gang of shit-flingers who stand the best chance of taking part in the 2016 Presidential primaries for the Republican nomination sashayed their closeted gay selves to Las Vegas and presented their hindquarters to the appraising gaze of Sheldon Adelson.

Adelson, it must be recalled, was Newton Gingrich's Sugar Daddy, writing check after check that Newt eventually pissed down his leg.  There were dark rumors that he'd whored out his trophy wife to Adelson in exchange for gas money for the campaign bus, but who listens to rumors?

And, as usual, the Rude Pundit has his teeth straight through the flesh and down on the bone.  Much better than any effort I could provide at this point.

Me?  Well, I consider politics a cross between street theater and blood sport, so I'm laying in extra stocks of booze and chips with salsa.

Screwballs

Astronomer Neil Degrasse Tyson of the American Museum of Natural History, after some poking and prodding, has chosen to be the narrator of the remake of Carl Sagan's epochal Cosmos.

I've seen the first episode, and it was very good, using up-to-date special effects to give the viewer the same sense of wonder that Sagan brought us with his 'ship of the imagination.'  He even used the Thornton Wilder Our Town meme of giving our address (although they did leave out the 'Mind of God' crap that Wilder used).

A recent episode discussed evolution, using a very nice example - the common household dog.

And people started to howl.

Yes, you guessed it.  The creationists, those wonderfully ignorant screwballs who believe that the planet and the universe are only 6000 years old, that humans and dinosaurs coexisted, and that shows like The Flintstones are actually documentaries - the creationists are complaining that Tyson and Cosmos aren't giving them equal time.

Well, guys and gals, there's an easy way around that:  Do your own fucking show.  Cosmos is being shown on Fox; surely you can gin up enough stupidity from Rupert Murdoch, his Arab co-owner, and other ignorant bastards to set it up.  Cthulhu knows you lot have a corner on the stupidity market, so why not broadcast it?

Go ahead!  Put your ignorance of modern science, science in general, and your general asininity on display so people can see the falsity of your position.  We could all use a good laugh.

"Reverend" Fred Phelps: I Defy Solon's Dictum

Yeah, yeah, I know already.  I'm a day late with this, but had a few family matters come up last night.  Never mind; it gives my vitriol time to mature, like fine Tokay.

The ancient Athenian lawmaker Solon laid down the dictum that one should never speak ill of the dead.  The spirits of the dead, Solon said, would be hovering around, hear what was being said, and either haunt the miscreant or band together with other ghosts and plague the city.

Now, I'm neither Greek nor speaking to you from 2500 years or so ago, so pardon me if I say:

"Fuck you, Fred Phelps.  You were a pathetic excrescence that should have died in a fire before you were disbarred and decided to set up a cult-like 'church' comprised mainly of members of your extended family.

"Fuck you, Fred Phelps, and the donkey that farted you out of its shithole after that horse screwed her before they gelded him.

"Fuck you, Fred Phelps, for soiling the honest grief of mourning families by picketing funerals and taunting the families with hate-filled rhetoric about their son/daughter/wife/husband/father/mother had died by God's hand because the country was 'soft' on homosexuality.

"Fuck you, Fred Phelps, on behalf of Christianity, for besmirching a God who is purportedly perfect love with caustic volleys of hate.

"Fuck you, Fred Phelps, for finally relenting - just a tiny bit - as you felt the yawning Abyss beneath you, only to be excommunicated from the church you founded by your very own family members."

Good-bye, Fred.  The world's a better, brighter, cleaner place without you.

So, That Happened

The Crimean Russians voted rather overwhelmingly (the word is that the Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians boycotted it, amid reports that the ballots had only a 'Yes' blank) to secede from Ukraine and declare themselves an independent state.  This basically lays the groundwork for the Russian-leaning legislature to "accept" an "offer" by the Russian Federation's State Duma for incorporation into the Federation.

Of course, the Russians also cleared the lines to Crimea's rear by seizing a natural gas plant on the Kherson Peninsula, Crimea's sole energy resource.  No fools, they, right?  One might think they had this planned out . . .

Now attention is turning toward the city of Donetsk and the Donbass industrial region, which is directly across the Don River from Mother Russia.  And with about 30,000 troops concentrating near said border, any bets about the Russian Army being sent in to "safeguard" ethnic Russians from "repression?"

The West and the US have started economic sanctions, and the new 'red line' just happens to include the ethnic Russian-dominated eastern 2/3 of the country.  More sanctions are being contemplated. 

Of course, the "Bomb 'Em All" crowd in Washington and among the Punditocracy are foaming at the mouth and masturbating feverishly - they got their Cold War back!  Nukes!  Underhanded, sneaky Russkis!  All the wonderful shit the world lived in fear of for fifty gods-damned years!

Good times!

I expect the following to come from the semen-dripping mouths of Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Lindsey Graham, et. al. any day now:

What Message Speaks the Drums?

It started a few months ago, with protest marches and demonstrations in Kiev after Ukrainian President Yanukovich decided to scrap a decision made by the Rada, that country's Parliament, to align the country a bit more closely to the West.  Instead, Yanukovich decided that his country lay with his principal source of support - the largely ethnic Russian eastern part of the country, and Mother Russia herself.

This naturally gratified President Putin, I suppose; Volodya has been a big advocate of blocking what he perceives as encroachments by the West (NATO, the EU and the US) so close to the Russian Federation's borders.  Russia, since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, has had no compunction about taking steps to protect what it calls the "Near Abroad" and considers its personal sphere of influence. Examples of this attitude include the brief incursion in support of ethnic Russians in Estonia and the Russo-Georgian Conflict in 2008.

The protests in Kiev got bloodier, as we all know, and culminated with the Ukrainian military refusing to support Yanukovich.  He fled the country (to Russia, imagine that), and things have started to go downhill faster than an Olympic luge entrant.

During the final set of protests cities such as Lvov and the western part of Ukraine stated that they were prepared to secede; the provincial governor of the Crimea said he was prepared to do the same.  The eastern part of Ukraine and the Crimea have an ethnic Russian population.

Care to guess?

Soldiers in unmarked Russian uniforms appeared and took over government buildings in Sevastopol and Simferopol.  That was the start.  The Russian Fleet has apparently begun to sortie, and an unnamed source has stated (no confirmation) that the Russian Navy has called on Ukrainian forces in Crimea to surrender.  The Ukrainian Navy C-in-C defected, and was denounced as a traitor when he attempted to persuade other officers to join him.  The Russians have 150,000 troops undergoing 'maneuvers' along the border, and the Ukrainians are mobilizing and saying that a war is imminent - a war the Russians will win, in my estimation; the Russians are not known for either a feline touch or doing things by halves.

So.  What's the West up to?

Right now the West is contemplating a certain set of sanctions (including on restricting travel, which will annoy Putin's rich oligarchic power base; the Boyars like to go to Paris), along with steps to isolate Russia (like cutting off talks to set up the G8 meeting in Sochi). 

Military action?  Not no, but fuck no.

Despite the cracked screeching of Senator John "I Yell at Clouds!" McCain (R-Senility), Sarah Palin, and the Criminally Blood-stained Oliver Fucking North, the United States is not contemplating any form of military action.  We don't have a large enough force in Europe to contest an invasion of Ukraine, being still bound up in Afghanistan.  Secretary of State John Woodenhead - er, Kerry denounced Russia's actions as an invasion on 'trumped-up causes.'

The irony of that was palpable.  Johnny-Mop, we invaded Iraq in 2003 based on trumped-up causes, and you voted for that, you stupid mook.  The blood of 4500 Americans stains your paws just as much as it does Dubya, Cheney, Wolfowitz and the rest - there's plenty to go around.

What message speaks the drums?

Nothing good.