GOOD PRESS FOR MY FAVORITE
HOUSTON THEATER COMPANIES

From the Houston Chronicle:

Theatre way outside the box

Avant-garde troupes don't have the downtown companies' luxurious accommodations, performing instead in funky holes-in-the-wall and warehouse spaces that suit their content. Of course, companies taking wild risks fall flat on their experimental faces from time to time. But so do companies that play it safe.

And

Mildred's Umbrella Theatre Company: Founded in 2002, this company stresses Houston premieres and new works. Under artistic director Jennifer Decker, it aims for hard-hitting fare, sometimes with a feminist tilt.

And

Dos chicas theater commune: Founded in 1997 by actors and writers "tired of the overproduced works" at other theaters, dos chicas has been doing its eclectic mix of bold dramas and camp comedies, new works by local writers and some classics. They perform in places familiar to the art crowd, everywhere from Commerce Street Art Warehouse to the bar Helios.

Click here for the rest.

This mainstream recognition is a long time in coming. As Anne, dos chicas theater goddess, explained when she emailed me the link, the article doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, but the theater critic who wrote it has been ignoring the marvelous underground scene in H-Town for years. Mildred's Umbrella, for whom many of my friends work, does cerebral but passionate and challenging theater. Even their failures are worth watching, and when they're on, they're sublime, and that's not a word I use very often with a straight face. Dos chicas, of course, is my permanent theater home in Houston. Even though I've been in Baton Rouge for over two years, they've still got me listed as a company member on their website, a status I hope I never lose, no matter where I go. They, too, do marvelous work, in an always fun-filled, devil-may-care atmosphere. In addition to allowing me to continue working as an actor while I toiled as a high school teacher, dos chicas gave me the opportunity to come into my own as a director.

If you're in Houston and looking for something to do, either of these companies' shows are well worth taking in. And tickets are cheap. They sell drinks, too.

Congrats guys. After all these years, you definitely deserve the praise.

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REPUBLICAN LOBBYIST MARKET TAKES A NOSEDIVE
Some out-of-work GOP staffers may face unemployment

From the Raw Story courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

With hundreds of Republican aides set to lose their jobs as Democrats take over Congress, K Street veterans tell Roll Call that some may have to file for unemployment benefits.

"The hundreds of Republican staffers — not to mention more than a few Members — who will lose their jobs in the next few weeks are going to face a hostile marketplace on K Street as unemployed Republicans flood the market," Kate Ackley writes for Roll Call.

"While GOP aides are flooding the town with their résumés, it’s now plugged-in Democratic aides whom companies and firms really have an eye for," the article continues.

Click here for the rest.

While I'm very much of the opinion that corporate lobbying ought to be totally banned, it's hard to not get a chuckle out of this dilemma facing all these former Hill staffers. After all, the Republicans created this problem. In the drive to turn the corporate lobbying industry into a GOP campaign cash cow, disgraced former House Majority Tom DeLay and others demanded that if lobbyists wanted action in Congress, they would have to donate heavily to the GOP and hire only Republicans as lobbyists. Consequently, after fourteen years of Republican rule, there is an enormous over-supply of GOP lobbyists and a massive shortage of the Democratic variety. Heh. Republicans understand how the market works: they're worthless now, and Democrats are hot shit.

The thought of unemployed Republicans standing in line to collect the unemployment checks that they ideologically oppose is just delicious. Now that the GOP is dead, irony is back in spades.

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"WELCOME TO DEATH VALLEY" REVISITED

First, let's get this bit of good news out of the way. From the AP via ESPN:

Russell sparks LSU offense, defense does rest vs. Bama

JaMarcus Russell threw three touchdown passes and frustrated Alabama with drive-extending scrambles to help No. 12 LSU keep its slim hopes for an SEC West Division title alive with a 28-14 victory Saturday night.

Russell was an efficient 18-of-21 passing for 207 yards and took only one sack. He connected with Early Doucet, Dwyane Bowe and Jacob Hester for scores. Freshman running back Keiland Williams gave the Tigers an early lead on a 38-yard touchdown run.

LSU (8-2, 4-2, SEC) also did not turn the ball over, unlike a feisty Alabama squad that might have pulled off an upset if not for missed opportunities.

Click here for the rest.

Well, this is cool. LSU, unlike my beloved Longhorns tonight, defeats a conference opponent convincingly without turning the ball over, which, hopefully, will shut up the local sports talk radio morons for awhile, if we're lucky. What kills me about this however, is that I could have actually seen this game in person if I hadn't rushed home from the stadium before kickoff to watch the horrifying loss Texas had against K State. You see, as with the show we did last fall, the Metamorphoses cast, for some free publicity, was presented to the crowd during the pre-game. Granted, I didn't have a ticket or a place to sit, but nobody seemed to be trying to get me to leave after we did our bit, either; I really was tempted to stay, but I knew that Texas was playing on TV, and because we don't perform on Saturdays when the Tigers play at home, this was one of my few opportunites to see the Longhorns this season.

I should have stayed at Death Valley.

Anyway, like last year, I brought my camera.



Yes, that's right. On game day at LSU, it's a party all over campus. Apparently, alcohol is strictly forbidden at LSU, but somehow that rule goes totally unenforced when the Tigers play at home--one of the mysteries of life, I guess.



Lots of outdoor cooking. Above is a nice little barbeque spread, brisket I think.



While these damned LSU colored Confederate flags are still present, I noticed far fewer of them this year than last. It looks like the anti-racist agitation of student activists is starting to pay off: the school is waging something of a PR campaign, finally, against theses misguided banners of "Southern pride."



Beautiful evening for a game. And great football weather, too, around 50 degrees or so.



Inside the stadium, waiting for our contact-guide. My classmate and pal Mark, on the left with arms crossed, watches me take the picture.



Mark said, "Wow, they have escalators here. I didn't know that."



Tigers doing some warm up drills.



Alabama's Crimson Tide, our opponent tonight, warming up as well. Mark again watches me playing photographer.



University Chancellor O'Keefe, in the white LSU cap, works the crowd. You know, he's the bastard who as head of NASA decided to cut the Hubble telescope. Fortunately, his successor there reversed the decision. It is interesting to note that O'Keefe is pals with Vice President Dick Cheney. Now that we know that Cheney has a thing for shooting friends in the face, I wonder if O'Keefe is ever nervous around the Veep.



A guy holding a giant novelty check for three and a half million dollars. I think Exxon was going to present it to the University after we did our bit during the pre-game.



My buddy Reuben takes a picture of the skycam. Cast member Rebecca, on the left, looks on.



More Tiger warm ups.



The skycam. What a marvelous technological age in which we live.



Lots of ROTC and full bird colonels there tonight for some reason. Swine Palace managing director Kristin, to the left, surveys the scene.



An LSU trainer examines an x-ray.



Alabama's gatorade table.



A close up of the cups. Okay, I was getting a bit bored at this point. Like I said I did this last year too.



LSU's caged mascot. This was actually a sort of cage-mobile, which drove around the stadium, eliciting intense applause in each section it cruised by. This is the kind of football weirdness that made the whole event worthwhile.



I took this from midfield as we were being presented to the crowd. The announcer read out our names and home towns while the guy on camera panned down the line we were in. The video feed went to the jumbotron thing. I did a hook 'em 'Horns sign when they got to me.

Then I went home and watched the 'Horns lose.

Sigh.

Geaux Tigers!

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Texas loses QB McCoy, then national title hopes at K-State

From the AP via ESPN:

Texas lost its young star -- and a whole lot more.

Quarterback Colt McCoy was hurt scoring a touchdown on the fourth-ranked Longhorns' opening drive, and his replacement struggled in a 45-42 loss to Kansas State on Saturday night that knocked the defending national champions out of the title hunt.

The Longhorns (9-2, 6-1 Big 12) got within a field goal on Chris Ogbonnaya's 1-yard touchdown run with 1:36 to go. But Jordy Nelson recovered the ensuing onside kick and then caught a 6-yard pass for a first down that sealed the Wildcats' win.

Josh Freeman took a knee, and purple-clad fans streamed onto the field to celebrate their biggest win in a few years.

Click here for more.

God damn it. And this had to be one of the few Texas games I've actually gotten to watch this year. Damn.

Damn, damn, damn. That's all I've got to say.

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FAREWELL ED BRADLEY

From the Houston Chronicle:

60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley dies at 65

Ed Bradley, an Emmy-winning contributor to 60 Minutes for more than 25 years, died Thursday of leukemia at age 65.

People close to the private Bradley knew he was ill, but news of his passing still shocked colleagues.

60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl told Fox News that Bradley's leukemia had been in remission until several days ago, when it "came back with a vengeance."

And

Before joining TV's pre-eminent news magazine, Bradley was CBS's first black White House correspondent.

"I looked up to him for many years before I got into the business," said KHOU (Channel 11) anchor Len Cannon. "He just had a way with telling a story. He wasn't a combative person, but he got answers to his questions; he was respectfully confrontational. Anytime you see an African-American in the position of Ed Bradley, there's great pride and admiration and respect there."

KPRC (Channel 2) anchor Jerome Gray said Bradley "was one of those people I looked up to and truly admired. From watching his reporting in Vietnam to his incredible interviews on 60 Minutes, that man was like an idol to a whole generation of journalists. I just can't believe he's not here anymore."

Click here for the rest.

You may or may not have noticed a while back that I didn't make a farewell post for longtime ABC evening news anchor Peter Jennings when he died. It's not that it wasn't sad, or that Jennings wasn't professional, or anything along those lines: it's that I don't really like TV journalists that much. One could argue persuasively that what passes for news these days on television barely even qualifies as journalism, and one would easily win an argument hands down asserting that broadcast journalists are a bunch of self-important pompous assholes--Bradley's CBS colleagues Dan Rather and Mike Wallace come to mind here rather strongly.

Anyway, the point here is that, in a forest of wanna be journalist TV assholes, Ed Bradley stood out as a real reporter, with humility, in the old school Murrow fashion. I don't really remember when I started paying attention to him. I know I started watching 60 Minutes when I was pretty young, ten or eleven, during the late 70s, so I'm sure I caught Bradley's run on the show from the very beginning. I know for sure that I was into him around the time he got his ear pierced at some point in the 90s; I read some report about it and I remember thinking, "Oh yeah, that guy, I've always loved him--how cool that he got an earring." A while later I started listening to the great radio show he hosted, Jazz at Lincoln Center. I was like, "He's into jazz? Fucking cool!!!" I've been a major Ed Bradley fan ever since.

His passing is truly a drag for me. In addition to his great news stories and jazz radio work, Bradley simply had a great persona. Quick to laugh, but dead serious when the situation called for it, a snazzy dresser, articulate but not stuffy, elegant in movement and stance, posessed of a remarkable voice, hip but not too much so, Bradley was, to me, something of a role model, not as a journalist, but as an American man. For my money, he was as cool as Miles Davis or Frank Sinatra, perhaps even more so because he was all over the place and right in the middle of Earth shaking events.



Farewell Ed Bradley.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING
Special all Frankie and Sammy edition!

Frankie





Sammy





Frankie and Sammy



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more fun cat blogging pics!!!

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TWO FROM THROW AWAY YOUR TV

We had an archival photo call after the show earlier this evening, then I had to go home and clean because my parents are coming to Baton Rouge to see me act tomorrow. Consequently, I'm short on blogging time. But for my usual lazy twofer, I've got a couple of cool video clips from a documentary debunking "the end times" lunacy via Throw Away Your TV, an excellent left-leaning video blog out of Canada you really ought to be checking out--I swear to god, these guys are turning me into an atheist with all their Richard Dawkins documentaries.

Anyway, here you go:

Preparing for the End of Times

I have been watching "The Doomsday Code" looking for clips to post, and I must say it's probably one of the best documentaries I have seen in awhile. Tony Robinson does a spectacular job uncovering the madness behind the End of Times. The Documentary guides you through the Book of Revelations and in this clip Robinson explains the Tribulation.

Click here to see the clip.

Book of Revelations written on Shrooms

There is strong evidence that suggests that the Book of Revelations was written while it's author "John" was under the influence of Shrooms...Magical Mushrooms. In this clip from "The Doomsday Code" Tony Robinson visits the Island of Patmos where the book was written and explores not only the historical reality of the time, but also the shrooms that grow naturally outside the cave where the book was written.

Click here to watch.

You know, this really makes me want to watch the The Doomsday Code in full. Fortunately, TAYTV provides a link. Pretty nice, eh?

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HOUSE AND SENATE!!!!!!!!
Democrats take control of Congress, AP reports

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Democrats wrested control of the Senate from Republicans Wednesday with an upset victory in Virginia, giving the party complete domination of Capitol Hill for the first time since 1994.

Jim Webb's squeaker win over incumbent U.S. Sen. George Allen gave Democrats their 51st seat in the Senate, an astonishing turnabout at the hands of voters unhappy with Republican scandal and unabated violence in Iraq. Allen was the sixth Republican incumbent senator defeated in Tuesday's elections.

The Senate had teetered at 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans for most of today, with Virginia hanging in the balance. Webb's victory ended Republican hopes of eking out a 50-50 split, with Vice President Dick Cheney wielding tie-breaking authority.

Click here for the rest.

So I heard about this in the dressing room during tonight's performance. Rarely these days do I feel any sense at all of absolute joy, but when I heard the news I started dancing and jumping around. This is fantastic. Both houses. Far freakin' out! Granted, I give the Democrats about six months or so before they start fucking it all up themselves, but tonight I can rejoice: the Republicans no longer control Congress, and that's good for the whole fucking world.

My buddy Reuben, who is in the show with me, probably had the best take on it. He said something to the effect of, "The Democrats didn't win; the Republicans lost." So true. But now it belongs to them. They have a major opportunity here: continue to allow the GOP to govern the shape and agenda of public discourse, as they did even before they took over in 1994, or to truly change the way the debate functions. That is, they have the chance to get the goddamned corporations, with their human grinding labor machines and policy, which is ultimately what gave Republicans total control in the first place, out of politics for good. Something tells me that's not going to happen.

But for now, I can dream can't I?

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BYE BYE RUMMY
Do let the door hit you on the way out...

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

A&M's GATES TO REPLACE RUMSFELD

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped down as defense secretary today, one day after midterm elections in which opposition to the war in Iraq contributed to heavy Republican losses.

President Bush said he would nominate Robert Gates, a former CIA director, to replace Rumsfeld at the Pentagon.

Asked whether his announcement signaled a new direction in the war that has claimed the lives of more than 2,800 U.S. troops, Bush said, "Well, there's certainly going to be new leadership at the Pentagon."

Bush lavished praise on Rumsfeld, who has spent six stormy years at his post. The president disclosed he met with Gates last Sunday, two days before the elections in which Democrats swept to control of the House and possibly the Senate.

Last week, as he campaigned to save the Republican majority, Bush declared that Rumsfeld would remain at the Pentagon through the end of his term.

Click here for the rest.

Rumsfeld, for me, completely typified the style and overall persona of the Bush administration. He's arrogant, authoritarian, bullying, incompetent, and totally unwilling to admit to any mistake at all. In short, he's a stupid asshole, much more suited to giving wedgies and swirlies to 9th graders in a football locker room than to commanding the most powerful military in world history. When you get right down to it, that's the real problem with the current White House: it's run by seventeen year old asshole jocks.

Rumsfeld's departure can only be a good thing.

It is fun to note, though ultimately inconsequential in the grand scheme, that Rummy's exit signals yet another Bush lie: "Last week...Bush declared that Rumsfeld would remain at the Pentagon through the remainder of his term." Whatever. Looks like the monkey's running scared. I'm loving it.

I don't know much about Gates, but I do know that, unlike so many other Bush appointees, he's a professional, with some real experience. He's inheriting a veritable monstrosity in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he won't be an idiot with it the way his predecessor was. This is definitely an improvement. Of course, it doesn't take much to be better than shit.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY REAL ART!!!

Mood music here.

Well, I've been doing this for exactly four years now. What with the show I'm in, the election, and busy life in general, I'd almost forgotten. But it's a good thing I remembered because there's some synchronicity going on.

Here, check out what I wrote for my first post:

You know, I wonder how it felt in 1930's Germany when the Nazis came to power. The House is Republican; the Senate is Republican; the White House is Republican; the majority on the Supreme Court is Republican. Maybe if we're all lucky this is the deathknell of the Democrats leaving the way open for a true people's party like the Greens or something. But I'm not feeling too lucky right about now...I don't even feel like the trains are going to end up running on time.

I wrote that two days after the last mid-term election, when the Republicans took back the Senate, solidified their hold on the House, and locked in the corrupt and inept Republican rule we've been enduring for the entire four years I've been blogging. It's nice to have been right about being afraid. We haven't gone fascist just yet, but our civil liberties have, indeed, been heavily eroded, and the trains, metaphorically speaking of course, are most definitely not running on time. In short, the Republicans have run the country into the ground, as I and many other bloggers have been documenting for years now.

On the other hand, the Dems seem revitalized, if only because everybody's so disgusted by the GOP--no third party push tonight, unfortunately. But getting rid of Republican rule, which may very well happen, is quite a good thing. It's been a long four years. And the Dems may, indeed, become revitalized, for real, for various reasons as this AlterNet essay explains.

So I started blogging out of political depression, but tonight, as I celebrate four years in the blogosphere, I'm hopeful. Things are looking good...



Happy birthday Real Art!!!

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THIS MONTH'S STAR TREK CALENDAR PICTURE IS...



Mr. Spock! God, I love that space suit...

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REPUBLICAN FRUSTRATION RUNNING HIGH

I got this email from a friend in New Orleans earlier today:

I was coming home from a foray to the PPC in Metairie, and was stuck in traffic waiting for a train...some guy - white, about 60 in a little convertible - pulled up next to me and motioned for me to roll down the window...when I did, he said, "you're an asshole!"...thinking I must have been driving badly, I responded, "why?"...he said, "because you have that fucking democrat sticker on your car! you're a fucking asshole!"...all I managed to say was "Jerk!" as he zoomed off (illegally) in the center turn lane...it made my adrenalin jump to be yelled at like that...then i was worrying he was going to come back and harass me (or worse) because i was still just sitting there in the traffic...sheesh...glad i'm home, and now we're under a tornado warning.

This would have been no surprise three and a half years ago, back during the hyperpatriotic run-up to the Iraq invasion, which villified both Michael Moore and the Dixie Chicks. But people have been treating each other much more civilly lately, especially after it's become so fucking obvious that Bush is totally incompetent and that the GOP Congress is the most corrupt in US history. The only thing I can think of to explain this bit of weirdness is that, barring mass election theft (see post below), it's looking like the Dems are taking over tomorrow, and that's just gotta hurt all these right wing bozos who think they're right about everything. They're losing their world, and it appears to be making some of them into even bigger bullies than they are usually.

On the other hand, people in the Big Easy are still pretty rattled by the effects of Katrina, and this guy could have just been blowing off some steam. Maybe it's a combination of both.

Make sure to vote on Tuesday!

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REPUBLICANS CHEAT IN ELECTIONS

From AlterNet:

How to Stop the GOP'S
Deceptive Robocalls from
Depressing Election Turnout

In addition to the phony mailers to Latinos, calls directing voters to nonexistent polls, and a fresh batch of onerous voter ID laws (video, right), this year's "hanging chad" is the Robocall.

Robocalling itself is simple: a computer calls your home phone and delivers a pre-recorded message about a candidate. They're annoying, sure, but it's legal and, according to one political strategist, "they represent the freedom of speech that our country was founded on."

Perhaps, but Americans aren't up in arms about an annoyance, and this isn't about the First Amendment. People are angry, and demanding action, because the Republican Party appears to be using fraudulent and misleading calls to suppress the vote in at least 50 districts across the nation....

Click here for the rest.

And what's particularly evil about these "robocalls" is that they call you repeatedly and are worded to give the impression that they're coming from Democratic candidates. The object here is to piss people off so much that they won't vote for the targeted candidate. I have to admit that I love the term "robocall," but this is pretty serious business. When considering this latest gambit alongside numerous other Republican dirty election tricks, it now appears that the GOP, nationwide, has no level to which they will not stoop in order to win. This isn't simply hardcore politics: this is a massive attempt to undermine democracy itself.

And they've done it, successfully, before. Recently.

Strangely, the Democratic Party establishment, with a very few notable exceptions, doesn't seem to have any interest in raising the hell that this warrants. I don't know about you, but I strongly believe in democracy, and taking away, or trying to take away, people's votes is one of the most horrifying things I can imagine. It means we're not free; it means we're not really Americans, at least in the sense we were all taught in school.

This does indeed warrant some hell raising, and the fact that these robocalls appear to be funded by the Republican National Committee means that Republicans, all Republicans, are fair targets. Every single one of them needs to denounce this and demand an end to it. If not, a lot of screaming and yelling, like the psychotic liberals they imagine us to be, has got to happen.

I'm hunting for some right-wingers tomorrow...

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Foley Is a Sexual Harasser, Not a Child Molester

From AlterNet, an exercise in common sense from Judith Levine:

No, Foley is something far less press-worthy: He is a sexual harasser -- a person who uses his position of power in a workplace or other institution to extract sexual favors from a subordinate.

Why don't we call him that?

One reason, no doubt, is that Nancy Pelosi and the other Democratic women know sexual harassment is not taken seriously in Washington. They remember Anita Hill. If a Supreme Court nominee could get away with it, who'd care about a piss-ant Florida rep?

More important, though, calling Foley's misconduct sexual harassment would be saying something about the young people on whom he hit.

The object of sexual harassment is assumed to be an adult.

And

This Congress has just passed the billion-dollar mark in appropriations for abstinence-only education. Its message: that minors are not -- and should not be -- sexual. While more than one congressional member has surely piqued to the sexual-object possibilities of the nubile messengers in their midst, they are ideologically unable to view these youngsters as sexual subjects -- least of all, as willing gay sexual subjects.

If they -- or we -- can't recognize teenagers' right to say yes, we have little choice but to "protect" them by saying no on their behalf, whether they want us to or not.

Click here for the rest.

This fits in very nicely with what I was trying to say a few weeks ago about the Foley affair. But then, that's no surprise. Levine's controversial book Harmful to Minors published a few years back was extraordinarily influential to me. Hers is one of the very few voices in public discourse that is able to navigate the treacherous waters, filled with hysteria, homophobia, media exploitation, political opportunism, and religious puritanism, of sexual dialogue in this country. That is, honest and reasonable public conversations about sex are exceedingly rare in this country. The Foley thing is a prime example: both sides of the debate were reeking of dishonesty, and the Democrats who opportunistically screamed "child molestation," when there was, and continues to be, absolutely no evidence of that at all, particularly pissed me off.

Clearly, the Foley affair, when all is said and done, is more about the intersection of American gay anxiety with American underage sex anxiety than anything else. People just go fucking crazy about these two subjects, and combining them appeared to create a sort of mass insanity. Perfectly reasonable people were saying some of the most stupid shit about it, condemning perfectly reasonable points of view while they drooled out their own fear induced weirdness.

I wonder what the next bizarre sex freak out's going to be.

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WHITE HOUSE POSTS INSTRUCTIONS FOR NUKE ONLINE
GOP rep. faults White House on Iraq site

From the AP via Yahoo courtesy of AlterNet:

President Bush's director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, ordered the documents posted on the site last March, at the request of Republicans in Congress who wanted to show Saddam was a real threat.

Scientists at a federal lab raised concerns that the site, as a repository for millions of pages the U.S. government found in Iraq the past 15 years, held sensitive nuclear information. Negroponte abruptly shut the site down Thursday night after The New York Times contacted his office for an article published Friday.

Click here for the rest.

I've read a couple of articles alleging that those Congressional Republicans were responding to right-wing bloggers who were literally begging for some info they could use to somehow show that Iraq, against all odds and common sense, actually had weapons of mass destruction when the US invaded back in 2003. I don't really know how directions for building a nuclear bomb, which are available in physics text books in libraries nationwide, would constitute evidence of WMD, but then, I'm not really sure how the conservative mind works anymore for that matter. I guess the fact that these particular instructions were in Arabic was going to be their argument's crux. The point here, for me anyway, is that this is very much along the lines of the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the press--yeah, yeah, I know that Plame's name was first leaked by Armitage, but Rove and Libby gleefully and illegally verified the leak like the opportunistic bastards they are. That is, the White House is perfectly willing to do something stupid, dangerous and illegal even, in order to get some political gain.

It's not just that Bush is a bad President, which he most certainly is: it's that allowing his administration to continue is dangerous to the nation. I hope to god they impeach the monkey with all due haste come January.

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BUT IT WAS JUST A MASSAGE!!!
Evangelical leader says he bought meth

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The Rev. Ted Haggard said Friday he bought methamphetamine and received a massage from a male prostitute. But the influential Christian evangelist insisted he threw the drugs away and never had sex with the man.

Haggard, who as president of the National Association of Evangelicals wielded influence on Capitol Hill and condemned both gay marriage and homosexuality, resigned on Thursday after a Denver man named Mike Jones claimed that he had many drug-fueled trysts with Haggard.

On Friday, Haggard said that he received a massage from Jones after being referred to him by a Denver hotel, and that he bought meth for himself from the man.

But Haggard said he never had sex with Jones. And as for the drugs, "I was tempted, but I never used it," the 50-year-old Haggard told reporters from his vehicle while leaving his home with his wife and three of his five children.

Click here for the rest.

Uber-blogger Atrios over at Eschaton had a one word comment on this story: "Okay."

So he bought meth and got a massage, but didn't have sex. Okay. What the hell is it with these people? Obviously, Haggard did have gay sex, apparently lots of it. Nothing wrong with that. And, likewise, there's nothing wrong, morally, with addiction--I mean, it's a problem, yeah, but it doesn't make Haggard evil or anything. What bothers me, of course, is the continuing tale of insanely high levels of hypocrisy on the right wing. And I'm not saying that liberals aren't prone to hypocrisy, either, it's just that liberalism, of the non-"p.c." variety, tends to be far less judgmental in a variety of areas, seeing drug addiction as illness rather than weakness of character or as sin, and seeing gay sex as being just as legitimate as straight sex. It strikes me that there are probably countless right-wingers who are probably closeted liberals, on social issues at least, if only they'd just let themselves be...well...themselves.

I'm really starting to buy heavily into the notion that politics are much more about how people perceive themselves, about identity, and far less about issues. And that's pretty frightening if you think about it for a bit.

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
TEXAS WINS, LSU WINS BIG

From the AP via ESPN:

McCoy launches Horns past Cowboys
in surprisingly lopsided game

The shootout between two of the Big 12's hotshot quarterbacks never developed.

Texas' Colt McCoy did his part with a career game.

Oklahoma State's Bobby Reid couldn't keep up against a Longhorns' defense that finally figured out how to stop the pass.

McCoy threw for a career-high 346 yards and set the Texas single-season record for touchdown passes in a 36-10 victory Saturday night that kept the No. 4 Longhorns in control of the Big 12 South.

The Longhorns (9-1, 6-0) have won 21 straight league games and coupled with No. 18 Oklahoma's 17-16 win over No. 21 Texas A&M, can lock up a berth in the Big 12 title game with a win next week at Kansas State.

Click here for the rest.

And, again, from the AP via ESPN:

LSU pins crucial second loss on
Tennessee on Russell's late TD pass

LSU can forget last year's disappointment against No. 8 Tennessee. The No. 13 Tigers have their own comeback to celebrate.

JaMarcus Russell hit Early Doucet with a 4-yard touchdown pass with 9 seconds left to give LSU a 28-24 win over the Volunteers on Saturday, and end the Volunteers' chances of winning the Southeastern Conference title.

Russell's third touchdown pass of the game gave the Tigers (7-2, 3-2 Southeastern Conference) their first road win of the season and revenge for last year's Volunteers' victory at Tiger Stadium.

"Our guys will remember this one," LSU coach Les Miles said. "If you wanna define who we are, if you wanna write who we are, that's who were are right there."

Last year in Baton Rouge, La., in LSU's first home game after hurricane Katrina and Rita, the Vols overcame a 21-point deficit to win 30-27 in overtime.

Click here for the rest.

So the Texas game didn't seem to be on TV here in Baton Rouge, which, I guess, doesn't really matter because we had a performance tonight and I couldn't have watched anyway. But it is damned frustrating having to miss all these Longhorn wins. Hell, the only full Texas game I've watched this year was the loss to Ohio State. Don't get me wrong: I am enjoying Mack Brown's winning ways; it's just that it would be nice to feel like I'm along for the ride. Damn you satellite TV people, getting to watch it all!!!!!

Anyway, this win against Oklahoma State sounds like the kind of UT game I like to watch--boring, perhaps, if you're not into OSU or UT, but I just love it when Texas looks like the winner all the way through. What's troubling me lately, however, is how this damned BCS thing works. As of last weekend, Texas is ranked #4 in both the AP and USA-Today polls. However, they're ranked #7 in the BCS, behind #3 West Virginia, who're definitely going to drop after Thursday's loss to Louisville, #4 Florida, who I've seen play on TV a couple of times this year, and, trust me, they're not that great, #5 Louisville (what the fuck?), and #6 Auburn, who are also not that great. Is it strength of schedule? But how could that explain such a huge difference? I mean, it's three whole slots! I'm no sports writer, well, I guess I'm a part-time sports blogger at any rate, but I feel pretty certain that Texas could take any of those teams.

I just don't get it.

Meanwhile, in the SEC, my current school LSU won a big huge victory over #8 Tennessee. I only got to see the last two minutes or so of that one--long story short, my cat Sammy kept me up much of the night with his incessant mewing so I tried to make up the difference by napping through the afternoon; Sammy whined through that as well. God, I'm tired. Anyway, as far as I can tell, it was a hard fought battle against a great team with home field advantage. LSU is obviously a great team playing in what may be the nation's toughest conference. There's probably not a chance in hell that they'll be playing for the SEC title, but they'll probably get one of the better second tier bowl berths.

That's why the goddamned sports talk radio guys here in Baton Rouge piss me off so much. We fucking beat the Volunteers, and then I turn on the radio and listen to these idiots calling for Les Miles' head. We won. What the hell do these people want? Granted, it's fair game to complain about LSU's four turnovers, which is waaay too high, but that's about it. Not enough, yet, to call for a new coach, which, if it actually happened, would set the Tigers back another couple of seasons while the new guy settles in. Les Miles is a great coach who gave the Longhorns all kinds of trouble when he was at Oklahoma State. He's trying to build on a fucking program that wasn't much more victorious during Sabin's last season than it is now.

Of course, if I recall correctly, Austin sports radio is just about the same. I really ought to quit listening to these morons.


Texas quarterback Colt McCoy, with plenty of time to pass, looks toward his receivers during first quarter action in their college football game against Oklahoma State, Saturday, Nov. 4, 2006, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Harry Cabluck)


Louisiana State's Early Doucet dives into the endzone to score the game-winning touchdown during a college football game against Tennessee, Saturday, Nov. 4, 2006. LSU won the game 28-24. (AP Photo/The Daily Times, Joy Kimbrough)

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MIXED REVIEW FOR THE SHOW I'M IN
Apparently, I'm no longer the man. Alas!

From the Baton Rouge Advocate:

‘Metamorphoses’ production tackles tough scenes

There are other places where this show is just an inch off. What could be a really funny scene in which Mark Jaynes as Phaeton complains to a pool-side shrink (Anna Richardson) about his sun-god dad, Ron Reeder, drags. Jaynes is a good comedic actor, but Reeder’s scat jazz accompaniment adds nothing to the scene. Richardson, good in the other roles she plays in the show, is not the actor Jaynes needs to play off in this scene. Jaynes is going 90 to nothing only to be slowed by Richardson and Reeder.

Click here for the rest.

Ouch.

While I may disagree with him, and, of course, it stings to take the brunt of this particular criticism, the reviewer does make a reasonable point. The script actually calls for Apollo to be singing Mozart's Un Aura Amorosa, an aria from his opera Cosi fan tutti. The director made the call to change it to jazz, and I had absolutely no disagreement with him when he did so. As longtime Real Art readers know, I love jazz. But we did depart quite heavily from what the playwright wrote, and that always entails certain risks. I can't help but wonder what the scene might have been like if we'd stuck with the opera stuff. Further, it's not out of bounds to assert that, even if we'd done the scene as written, there may simply be too much going on. That is, Mark's got some pretty funny speeches here, and the playwright, Mary Zimmerman, may have overplayed her hand. So this is definitely fair criticism.

It would have been nice, however, to have gotten the "good in the other roles" phrase that Anna got. Aw hell, I've gotten nailed in reviews before, and I'm sure I'll get nailed again. It's part of the job.

On the other hand, I respectfully disagree with him. At the very least, I'm having a damned good time up there, improvising and riffing on classic jazz tunes every night. A long-time New York actor who comes to see our shows gave me some good advice earlier this evening for dealing with a negative review: "Fuck him!" Heh. Really, this Advocate guy's just doing his job, calling it like he sees it, but I can't let that get to me.

So I'm going to fuck him. I hope he's a nice guy.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Sammy



Frankie



Paz



Phil



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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I GOT MY PICTURE IN THE PAPER

And I didn't even have to do anything illegal. From the LSU student newspaper the Daily Reveille:

Tides of Change

Swine Palace is starting this semester's theatre season with a splash - literally.

"Metamorphoses" opens Friday at 7:30 p.m. and runs through Nov. 19 in Reilly Theatre. The show features an onstage swimming pool, a new challenge for LSU Theatre.

"They've done some shows where they did some water on stage for 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' but it was nowhere near the scale of this," said Vastine Stabler, director of marketing for LSU Theatre. "Most of the scenes and action take place in or around the pool."

And

"Metamorphoses" is based on the mythical world of Ovid. Ovid's 250 myths have been narrowed down to the 10 myths represented in the play. These myths include characters such as Myrrah, a young girl who is lusting after her father, and gods and goddesses such as a Mardi Gras-like Bacchus, Aphrodite and Poseidon.

Click here for the rest.

So it's really just a promotional article, rather than a review, which I'm sure will be coming soon, but, hey, they ran a picture of me! I don't even remember the last time I scored that big. High school, maybe. For years now, I've sat back and watched while others got the glory. Like an offensive lineman, I've had to be content with simply doing a good job. But not today. Today, I am the man. Hahahahahahaha!

Okay, obviously it's not that big of a deal, and I really am content with simply doing a good job. But it is kind of nice. And we do have a good show on our hands. And I am, indeed, doing a good job, just like the rest of the cast.

So check it out:


Theater graduate students Kesha Bullard and Ron Reeder perform in the dress rehearsal for "Metamorphoses." Photo by Erin Parker.

I'm the man!!!

You know, in this shot I'm playing Morpheus, god of dreams, which is way cool because I totally grooved to the comic book version of the character, a.k.a. the Sandman, back in the 90s. It's very difficult to not by influenced by Neil Gaiman's writing, but that's not such a bad thing at all.

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TEXAS GOVERNOR VOWS TO VIOLATE FIRST AMENDMENT

From the Houston Chronicle:

Perry: Government should save children from 'godlessness'

Gov. Rick Perry in a closed meeting today told black ministers in Houston that government has an important function in promoting strong moral values and saving children from a "culture of godlessness" that exists on television.

"It's a ridiculous notion to say you cannot legislate morality," Perry told the ministers.

Meanwhile, Perry's main challengers traveled the state trying to drum up support more publicly. Democrat Chris Bell and independent Kinky Friedman were in East Texas, while independent Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn was in Central Texas and Houston.

Perry's visit with the ministers at the Houston Grand Plaza Hotel was not on his campaign schedule. His remarks were audible to reporters waiting in the lobby before they were asked to leave by hotel management.

Click here for the rest.

I don't even know where to start criticizing this one.

Americans who have a basic knowledge of the US Constitution fully understand that the government, with very good reason, is totally forbidden to undertake any action that is tantamount to establishing a religion--public school mandated prayer, for instance, favors Christianity, and because the schools are an arm of government, and because favoring any one religion over another, or over atheism or agnosticism for that matter, is essentially the same as giving Christianity official status, it is illegal. Same thing with saving children from "godlessness," whatever the hell that means. That is, if Perry follows through on his secret threat, he'll be breaking the law.

The dumbshit.

Furthermore, what the fuck kind of moral values is the government supposed to promote? I'm almost one hundred percent certain that Perry isn't interested in promoting my values. After all, my values would have Perry thrown out of office and into a nice jail cell where he could think about how his tenure as governor has made things much worse for poor Texans but much better for wealthy Texans. I'm sure that what Perry's pushing would be called "Christian" values, despite the fact that such values really have nothing to do with what Jesus actually asserted.

It is ironic, indeed, that my values are much, much closer to the Gospels than the winner-take-all philosophy of dickwad Republicans like Haircut Rick.

Finally, what the fuck is up with the super-secret nature of Perry's speech? He fucking talks about stalking Texas godlessness in private, but pretends to be tolerant and inclusive in public. Goddamned Republicans. This is soooooo slimy. The punchline here is that, like his predecessor George W. Bush, Perry probably has no intention of actually doing anything for the religious right. It's all just talk.

But it's still damned infuriating. The fucker.

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Kansas AG gets abortion clinic records

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The state attorney general said Tuesday night that his office has received the records of 90 patients from two abortion clinics and is reviewing them for possible crimes, the culmination of an effort that prompted concerns over patient privacy.

Attorney General Phill Kline, one of the nation's foremost abortion opponents, said the targets of his investigation are rapists, sex offenders with child victims, and doctors involved in illegal abortions. Those could include doctors performing illegal late-term abortions or those failing to report abuse of a child.

Click here for the rest.

Fortunately, because Planned Parenthood fought hard in court, they didn't get all abortion records, which they wanted, and what they got had the names blacked out. But this still pisses me off. The Kansas AG, "one of the nation's foremost abortion opponents," is obviously trying to harass both abortion providers and women who seek abortions, which fits neatly into the anti-abortion movement's overall strategy of death-by-a-thousand-cuts. That is, failing, again and again, to have Roe v Wade reversed, the pro-lifers have for years been trying, by numerous methods, to create a situation such that it's very difficult or impossible to get an abortion, even if the procedure is still technically legal. They've found some success, too: I understand that there is now only one clinic in the state of Mississippi that provides abortions. Other parts of the country are the same. This fishing expedition for patient records in Kansas won't catch any rapists, but it will make women think twice before seeking an abortion. That is, Kline is purposely trying to scare women into carrying their unwanted fetuses to term. Fucking bastard.

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Kerry apologizes for Iraq joke, cancels appearances

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

"Of course, now Senator Kerry says he was just making a joke, and he botched it up," Vice President Dick Cheney said in remarks prepared for a campaign appearance in Montana. "I guess we didn't get the nuance. He was for the joke before he was against it."

The jab was designed to recall Kerry's inartful comment from the last election that he had voted for $87 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before he voted against it.

Two days ago, Kerry stirred controversy when he told a group of California students that individuals who don't study hard and do their homework would likely "get stuck in Iraq." Aides said the senator had mistakenly dropped one word from his prepared remarks, which was originally written to say "you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq." In that context, they said, it was clear Kerry was referring to Bush, not to the troops.

The speed with which party leaders and candidates shoved Kerry aside underscored the difficulty he will face running for the nomination after leading the party to defeat in 2004. He also had the misfortune of being disinvited from an appearance in Iowa — the state whose caucuses will begin the delegate selection process for the White House race.

Click here for the rest.

Christ, this is so pathetic. This is one of the main reasons why Democrats are the loser party, and, even if they manage to take Congress next Tuesday, it's also why they'll probably be fairly ineffective as the majority party. Kerry, for whom I voted in '04 but don't really respect, obviously didn't insult the troops. I think it's fairly safe to buy the missing word story. He misspoke. Big fucking deal. What's happening here is that the Republicans have nothing positive on which to run, but they still posess amazing capabilities when it comes to smearing opponents, and that's exactly what they're doing. Of course, everytime that happens the Democrats start to cower like the big fucking pussies they are. Fucking idiots. Didn't any of these donkey butts take notice when Bill Clinton on Fox a few weeks back showed them how to fight back? Man, when one of your own is attacked you don't join in the dog pile: you help him out. All this retreat does is help the Republicans.

God, I hate the Democrats.

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TWO FROM THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Okay, I'm in tech rehearsals for the show I'm in right now, so I'm really short on time. Consequently, I'm posting this lazy twofer consisting only of a couple of excerpts and links. But it's good stuff, a couple of nice essays from the Chronicle's op-ed section. Enjoy.

'Academic Bill of Rights' would limit speech, learning

In truth, these efforts only hurt the students they purport to help. Horowitz and his backers aren't protecting our rights; they're impeding our educations. The Academic Bill of Rights would substitute political correctness for the free exchange of ideas on campus by preventing faculty and students from discussing fresh or controversial ideas in class. It would restrict what professors can teach and what students can learn.

This exchange between teachers and pupils lies at the heart of liberal education. But ABOR's backers argue that professors presenting new ideas might "indoctrinate" or offend students. Their bill denies us the right to evaluate the merits of ideas and arguments for ourselves by banning "political" or "antireligious" speech from classrooms.

Click here for the rest.

A year to remember: GOP turned from hope to slimy

Ronald Reagan's brilliant achievement on behalf of American conservatism was to capture hope and optimism from a liberal movement that enjoyed a near monopoly on those virtues from the day Franklin Roosevelt told us we had nothing to fear but fear itself.

Whatever else it will be remembered for, this year's election campaign will mark the moment when Republican leaders who govern in the name of conservatism turned definitely away from hope and waged one of the most trivial and ugly campaigns in our country's history.

Click here for the rest.

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It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

That's right: I've found the video on YouTube! But first, this from Wikipedia:

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a critically-acclaimed and very popular animated television special based on the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz.

The special depicts one Halloween night in which Linus Van Pelt, Charlie Brown's security blanket-toting best friend, eagerly awaits the arrival of "the Great Pumpkin", who Linus believes to travel around the world each Halloween giving toys to all the good little children (in the manner of Santa Claus each Christmas).

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was the second Peanuts special to be produced and animated by Bill Melendez. Its initial broadcast took place on October 27, 1966, on the CBS network; CBS re-aired the special annually through 2000, with ABC picking up the rights beginning in 2001.

The program was nominated for an Emmy award.

Click here for more.

Along with the Christmas special and the Thanksgiving special, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown rounds out the great trilogy of Peanuts holiday shows from the 60s. I don't have a personal favorite because they're all great, with their fantastic Vince Guaraldi cool jazz soundtracks, and a modernist sensibility about the animation--it's really hard to say "this is the best." I suppose it depends on the time of year, so, for the moment, I'm into this one most. Then it'll be Thanksgiving, but not just yet. Anyway, who couldn't be emotionally affected by Linus' fatal fight with disillusionment? Who couldn't have some sympathy for Charlie Brown only getting rocks in his trick or treating bag or his badly botched ghost costume? If you don't like this, you're an inhuman monster.

Click here to watch it.





Happy Halloween!

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Pentagon memo reveals launch of new PR war

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The Pentagon is buttressing its public relations staff and starting an operation akin to a political campaign war room as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld faces intensifying criticism over the Iraq war.

In a memo obtained by the Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said new teams of people will "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and "correct the record."

And

Ruff said today that the reorganization, spearheaded by Smith, will help the department "set the record straight" and provide accurate, timely information.

He denied that the effort was set up to respond to the eroding public support for the war, or that it was aimed at helping in next week's elections. He also said he would not call it an "information operations" program, which generally refers to a propaganda-type campaign.

Click here for more.

From Merriam-Webster Online:

public relations: the business of inducing the public to have understanding for and goodwill toward a person, firm, or institution

propaganda: ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause

You know, in the media saturated culture in which we live, it only makes good sense for any large institution to have an office of some sort for dealing with the press. On the other hand, this new Pentagon thing is something entirely different; it's "akin to a political campaign war room," which means that the military is getting into the business of politics. That's very disturbing. There are some extraordinarily good reasons that our founding fathers deliberately made the military obey a civilian commander-in-chief. First and foremost is the fact that the armed services are an incredible concentration of power, highly organized and efficient. We've seen throughout history numerous instances when such concentrations of power simply take over, and why not? They've got the strength to do it. By design, the US military is totally banned from any interference in the civil political system. It's too much of a slippery slope--how much interference is too much? Clearly, the people who established our nation believed that any interference is too much. After all, once you've crossed one line, what's the difference in crossing the next one? Rumsfeld is playing with fire here. This is really fucking dangerous.

Never mind the fact that Pentagon PR is bound to be just a bunch of feel-good, pro-war bullshit.

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GAO chief warns economic disaster looms

From the AP via Yahoo courtesy of AlterNet:

Why is America so fiscally unprepared for the next century? Like many of its citizens, the United States has spent the last few years racking up debt instead of saving for the future. Foreign lenders — primarily the central banks of China, Japan and other big U.S. trading partners — have been eager to lend the government money at low interest rates, making the current $8.5-trillion deficit about as painful as a big balance on a zero-percent credit card.

In her part of the fiscal wake-up tour presentation, Rogers tries to explain why that's a bad thing. For one thing, even when rates are low a bigger deficit means a greater portion of each tax dollar goes to interest payments rather than useful programs. And because foreigners now hold so much of the federal government's debt, those interest payments increasingly go overseas rather than to U.S. investors.

More serious is the possibility that foreign lenders might lose their enthusiasm for lending money to the United States. Because treasury bills are sold at auction, that would mean paying higher interest rates in the future. And it wouldn't just be the government's problem. All interest rates would rise, making mortgages, car payments and student loans costlier, too.

A modest rise in interest rates wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, Rogers said. America's consumers have as much of a borrowing problem as their government does, so higher rates could moderate overconsumption and encourage consumer saving. But a big jump in interest rates could cause economic catastrophe. Some economists even predict the government would resort to printing money to pay off its debt, a risky strategy that could lead to runaway inflation.

Click here for the rest.

The above excerpted article reports that there is only one tonic for all these economic woes, cutting social services and raising taxes dramatically, which is pretty much all I ever hear anyone in the American mainstream suggest as far as curing the deficit goes. That's pretty weird because there is one very easy and rather painless solution staring us all right in the face. I mean, it really is an elephant in the middle of the living room: cut defense spending massively. The bottom line is that, while we do need some kind of military for protection, what we have now is so insanely huge that it can only be used for imperial purposes. That is, we just don't need it anymore, and imperial wars these days, as amply illustrated by first the Vietnamese and now the Iraqis, are by and large unwinnable, and therefore a waste of money. Besides, with so many arms on hand, the temptation to use them is seemingly overwhelming. It's time to end America's role as defender of corporate globalism and start tending to our needs right here at home. Hell, we don't even have to say goodbye to the corporate system: all we have to do is start working in tandem with--gasp!--other nations to ensure business security.

Face it, our huge military is a near total waste of money, and it threatens the entire economic system that it exists to protect. Christ, our leaders are so fucking stupid.

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Workers' Rights Are About Dignity As Much As Wages

From AlterNet, an essay by Nickel and Dimed author Barbara Ehrenreich:

Something similar goes on in the case of the laid off and unemployed, thanks to the prevailing Calvinist form of Protestantism, according to which productivity and employment are the source of one's identity as well as one's income. Not working? Then what are you? And to put the Calvinist message in crude theological terms: Go to hell.

In case anyone fails to feel their full measure of shame over unemployment, there is an entire shame industry to whip them into shape: the career coaches, self-help books, motivational speakers, and business gurus who preach that whatever happens to you must be a result of your own attitude. Laid-off and coming up empty on your job search? You must be too negative, and hence attracting negative circumstances into your life. To paraphrase one career coach I encountered during my research for Bait and Switch: We're not here to talk about the economy or the market; we're here to talk about you.

Click here for the rest.

Yeah, well, obviously it's not all thanks to Protestantism, although its pre-existing strain infecting our culture made fertile ground for what's really going on: all these motivational speakers and career coaches are just one part of a massive propaganda campaign to make individual economic circumstances all about you, the individual, rather than about the overall economic context. That is, how many times have you heard someone say that labor unions were once a very good thing, but that their time has passed? That's the conventional wisdom shared by countless journalists, politicians, and pundits, which dominates the US political discourse. The corporate news media simply don't cover labor issues, at least, not in the way they cover business issues--one half of the equation is simply off the table. Add to all that the fact that the labor movement and the importance of collective bargaining are always taught in public schools in the most boring ways possible. I vaguely remember covering labor in the US history class I took when I was a junior in high school; I remember very clearly, however, all the war stuff, and what badasses Americans are when they shoot foreigners.

If you're out of work, or suffering in a low-paying, no-benefit job you hate, there's a very good chance it isn't your fault: most likely, you're a pawn caught up in a power game waged by people who don't give a rat's ass whether you live or die. I mean, if you're a lazy fuck who just resents having to work, well, go to hell; I'm not talking about you. But if you're honestly trying, trust me, you're getting fucked over, and it's not your fault if you feel like you're failing.

And voting for Democrats probably isn't going to do much to help you.

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Democrats Get Late Donations From Business

From the New York Times courtesy of AlterNet:

Corporate America is already thinking beyond Election Day, increasing its share of last-minute donations to Democratic candidates and quietly devising strategies for how to work with Democrats if they win control of Congress.

The shift in political giving, for the first 18 days of October, has not been this pronounced in the final stages of a campaign since 1994, when Republicans swept control of the House for the first time in four decades.

Though Democratic control of either chamber of Congress is far from certain, the prospect of a power shift is leading interest groups to begin rethinking well-established relationships, with business lobbyists going as far as finding potential Democratic allies in the freshman class — even if they are still trying to defeat them on the campaign trail — and preparing to extend an olive branch the morning after the election.

Click here for the rest.

No surprise here. The corporations don't really care which party is in power as long as they're beholden to corporate interests. Bunch a fucking sleaze bags. But just because it's no surprise is no reason not to worry. The GOP dominated Congress' biggest problem isn't that they are conservative, although that is a problem: their biggest problem is that they absolutely depend on corporate campaign contributions in order to stay in power; obviously, such money comes with many strings attached. Democrats are no different. They need that money, too, so they'll take it. And, once elected, they will continue to need that corporate money continually coming in, which means that they won't do anything to offend their money tree. In other words, we may be looking at the seeds of Democratic self-destruction, which is something that they're pretty good with all by themselves. And you can bet your butt that the Republicans aren't going to be as timid as their opponents when it comes to attacking the majority party on corruption. If the Dems take over, it could get pretty bad.

At least I'll have plenty to blog about.

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