It Is Good To Be King

I was always under the impression that in a democracy, government decisions are made in a democratic manner... as in, a bill is introduced... there is debate... (money and favors are exchanged) and then the bill is either passed or vetoed... It's all right here in this helpful video below in case you wish to brush up on your civics...



However it seems as though civics have changed somewhat since I attended grade school... apparently when you are the president, you also adopt the powers of an infallible monarch...

Who knew?

As you read this, Georgy Porgy's goon squad is racing through the slick brass and marble hallways of DC, greasing the palms of death minions, litigious stooges, gutter snipes, murdering military industrialists, corporate whores, death cronies, and grimy fisted lobbyists with every last shekel they could scrounge up...

Damned be the environment, damned be the economy, damned be democracy... What we've got here is the glorified back end of favoritism, nepotism, and cronyism in action... there are fat pimpled albino asses to be kissed... white elephants to be celebrated... Satan babies to be spawned... Yep... line right up at the George W. Bush kissin' booth for some right on right wing tongue twistin' action... (Special announcement: Would all bankers please report to the Hank Paulson sauna complex for your complimentary reach-around...)

By the time George relocates to his all white gated community in Texas on January 21st, a whole new and improved cornucopia of greed called "Midnight Regulations" will have hit the ledgers...

You see... There is a gaping loophole in US law which allows a sitting president to pass last-minute legislation into the Code of Federal Regulations, which for all practical purposes, makes them law... without ANY approval from Congress...

Let freedom ring!!!

To be fair, other presidents have used this loophole to extend their agenda past their sell-by date, but W. is taking to it with the vigor of a drunken frat-boy attached to the business end of a beer bong on his 21st birthday... This is, in all essence, George's final "fuck you" statement to us all... his middle finger extended... thumbing his nose... his tongue wagging... his naked ass mooning out the school bus window for all to admire...

While the media obsesses over sociopath governors, dead toddlers and auto bailouts... While most Americans are wondering if they'll have jobs or homes tomorrow... While most of America is in a perpetual state of carbohydrate induced bliss... W. is using brilliant sleight of hand to gift his partners in crime one last box of legislative confections... the introduction of weakened workplace safety measures, rollbacks on environmental and endangered species acts, legislation that inhibits a woman's right to choose, and NRA goodies that will make certain more of our unstable citizenry will be packing heat at your kid's soccer game...

George's gift basket of ill-repute also includes the time-honored Republican standard of "self-regulation"... because lord knows that you can trust bankers, oilmen, accountants, brokerages, and insurance companies to regulate themselves much in the same way you could trust that Nero's starving lions wouldn't treat the Christians as delicious, meaty cat toys...

Obama's team will have their work cut out for them if they wish to roll back any of these new laws... you see, undoing a law puts it into the open, where a long and expensive litigious process has to take place before it can finally be rescinded. It's not like the Obama administration will have anything better to do other than clean up one more in a long list of unsolvable clusterfucks left in the wake of the USS Incompetence...

Let's take a gander at some of the pain Bush is about to bring:

The introduction of legislation which allows coal companies to dump waste from strip-mining into valleys and streams. (Nothing better than chopping off the top of a mountain and then filling in a valley... call it "landscaping" or "Oklahoma-ization")

The introduction of legislation that will allow the building of coal-fired power stations near national parks. (Because nothing says family vacation better than a case of black lung...)

The introduction of legislation allowing people to carry loaded and concealed weapons in national parks. (Because nothing says family vacation better than a sucking chest wound...)

The introduction of legislation allowing health care workers to opt out of giving treatment for religious or moral reasons, thereby putting a woman's right to choose at risk, among other things... (hmmm... just who I want treating me in the ER trauma center as I'm bleeding to death... a Jehovah's Witness who doesn't believe in blood transfusions...)

The introduction of legislation that will allow truck drivers to continue driving for 11 consecutive hours. (Ah yes... what could be better than a completely tweaked out of his mind long hauler with anger management issues listening to a Toby Keith cd locked on repeat... Hey folks, here is some unsolicited investment advice... purchase some shares of Red Bull and crystal meth...)

The introduction of legislation surrendering government control of rerouting the rail transport of hazardous materials around densely populated areas... (Remember to breathe deeply when that misty cyanide cloud hits your humble abode... you'll go quicker that way...)

The introduction of legislation that will allow millions of acres to be mined for oil shale... (Hmmmm... maybe this last one we can do something about...)

Wanna be a tiny thorn in their side?

The NDRC (led by such luminaries as Robert Redford, Leo DiCaprio, Billy Joe Armstrong, among others...) is launching an emergency campaign to stop Bush from awarding over 160,000 acres of pristine Utah canyonlands to oil and gas speculators on December 19th. These remote canyons have been unspoiled for thousands of years... and if Bush has his way, they will be destroyed beyond repair...

You can sign the petition here:

Stop Bush's Giveaway of America's Redrock Wilderness

My god, at long last, is there nothing these people will not destroy in order to obtain gooey black muck? Never mind that oil prices will have to be at least $200 a barrel (that should tell you where the price of gas is headed...) for such an exercise to be profitable, because this oil is deep and literally within the sediment... it has to be cooked out, a long and poisonous process that is costly in more ways than one can imagine...

So yeah... let's keep looking for pristine areas to destroy, let's keep looking for that last fix to get us through the long dark night that the end of oil has planned for us... let's raze the whole fucking planet looking for anything combustible until all that is left is carbon dust, and then let's burn that as well...

On a completely unrelated note, the Fed just dropped rates to ZERO... so there you have it folks... free money... everything is going to be JUST FINE...

Have a peachy day...

GO ON... CALL ME AN IDIOT IN THE COMMENTS SECTION...

Arrested Development

It has been said that timing is everything, so it is only fitting that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich got himself arrested for corruption on... drumroll please... UN Anti-Corruption Day!!!

The FBI phoned Blagojevich at 6 a.m. Tuesday, telling him of a warrant for his arrest and informing him that there were two FBI agents at his door. Blagojevich's first comment was, "Is this a joke?" (Interesting side note... when Blagojevich was "interviewed" by Jason Jones of the Daily Show two years ago, he didn't comprehend that the interview was a joke... oh the irony...)

Blagojevich, who was charged with conspiracy to commit fraud and solicitation to commit bribery, let friendly union officials and fundraisers know that for the right price, Barack Obama's vacant Illinois Senate seat could be had. Blagojevich was also in the midst of an attempt to raise $2.5 million by the end of the year, before a state anti-corruption law he tried to veto (Obama got the state senate to override it) took effect. This led the Feds to wiretap his phones and the rest is history...

The House of Blagojevich was a “pay to play” operation and the governor had a price... $250,000 to $300,000 a year, and an influential job with a nonprofit foundation or union... and a plum board of directors gig for Mrs. Blagojevich. He even had fantasies of being Obama's Secretary of Health and Human services or an ambassador...

The desire to ingratiate himself into the Obama Administration may well have led to his eventual undoing... Rumor has it the Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel may have tipped off the FBI to Blagojevich's hair brained scheme... Note to self: Rahm Emanuel is not to be crossed... that G is a straight up gangsta IDF mofo...

Not only was this genius caught on FBI wiretaps conniving to sell in exchange for bribes, the dimwit was fully aware that he was being investigated for fraud and MUST HAVE KNOWN he was under surveillance... Just Monday he challenged reporters stating, "I don't care whether you tape me privately or publicly. I can tell you that whatever I say is always lawful."

Ummmmm... ok... perhaps his definition of lawful is just "different" than ours...

Among some of the "lawful" things he said were these whoppers:

"I've got this thing (the Illinois Senate seat) and it's fucking golden, and I'm just not giving it up for fucking nothing. I'm not gonna do it."

"They're (the Obama Administration) not going to offer me anything of value, I might as well take it, They're not going to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck them."

"Consultants are telling me that I have to suck it up for two years and do nothing and give this motherfucker (the President-elect) his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him.”

Sounds like someone saw a few too many episodes of the Sopranos...

The level of Blago's chutzpah even got the typically staid U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (yes, the prosecutor behind Plamegate) seeing red... "The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering. They allege that Blagojevich put a ‘for sale' sign on the naming of a United States senator. The Senate seat, as recently as days ago, seemed to be on the verge of being auctioned off. The conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave," said Fitzgerald.

Apparently the typical, run of the mill fall from grace didn't pass muster for Blagojevich... you know, getting caught with heroin, or with a prostitute, or with a teenage boy, etc... that must have been deemed as too passe... And based on this assumption, we must at least give Blago points for creativity... Nicely done Rod... I spose if you are gonna go down, you might as well go down in flames...

This cat might well be one of the most brazen idiots in American political history... take a moment to let that rattle around inside your noggin for a minute... think of the competition... that is A LOT of brazen idiots... which leads me to ask the obvious question, how the hell does someone like this get to be a governor?

During his term in Springfield (The state capital of Illinois, where he refused to live in the governor's mansion and commuted from Chicago several times a week via private plane at the cost of $6,000 per round trip...), he has battled friends and foe alike, all the way down to a 4% approval rating (no, that wasn't a typo) according to one poll... Some of his fellow lawmakers have described him as "disengaged" and "dictatorial"... a "madman" and "insane"... a 10-year-old child and yes, a "cuckoo"...

The arrogant SOB even considered appointing himself to the Senate seat, thinking that it might help him avoid impeachment and help rebuild his image for a possible presidential run in 2016...

Yes, you read that correctly... this sociopath had designs on the Oval Office...

Blagojevich also sweated the Chicago Tribune, threatening to withhold state assistance to parent company Tribune Co. in an attempt to force the newspaper into firing editorial writers who had been critical. Supposedly Tribune CEO (and resident evil troll and slumlord) Sam Zell got the message and was very "sensitive" to the issue.

Ah yes, Illinois... where dead people vote early and often, governors go to the big house, and the Cubs have crushed hopes and dreams for 100 years and counting...

As for President-elect Obama... how is he wrapped in all of this?

So far he's not... Prosecutors backed up the president-elect's claim stating that he had no contact with the governor or his office, was not aware of what was happening. However, one can trust that his claim of ignorance won't stop political enemies from pegging this as his first scandal...

GO ON... LEAVE YOUR "THOUGHTS" IN THE COMMENTS SECTION...