Largely due to his reputation, some reporters appeared hesitant to repeat word of his death out of fear that it may have been a hoax.

That really brings up an interesting point. Why haven’t we seen a death certificate? I can not accept that Breitbart is dead until someone shows me a long form death certificate that has been notarized by a caretaker in the Reagan library.

But just in case he is dead… Andrew Breitbart, how should we eulogize thee? Should we treat you with the respect we normally set aside for the dead, honoring the person and temporarily forgetting politics and personal views?

Well, actually yes.

Of course, we cant discount things like this…

Andrew Breitbart, a Washington Times columnist who oversees Breitbart.com and BigHollywood.com, tapped into the anti-Kennedy vein in the hours after the senator’s death was announced, posting a series of Twitter messages in which he called Kennedy a “villain,” a “duplicitous bastard” and a “prick.”

“I’m more than willing to go off decorum to ensure THIS MAN is not beatified,” Breitbart wrote. “Sorry, he destroyed lives. And he knew it.”

(From Politico.com, regarding Breitbart after Ted Kennedy’s death)

Huh. Ironic, no? But still, no sense in taking a grade school mentality about this. I can hardly call him names just because he did it first.

Unless he isn’t dead. I haven’t seen proof yet.

Yes, its an old story. I just read it recently. Get the fuck off my lawn.

For example: Last weekend, one of the “Recall Walker” signature-gatherers knocked on my door. I answered the door in my normal Saturday morning outfit: Wearing the scent of booze and my wife’s bathrobe.

In retrospect, I have finally realized that may be crossing a line of decency. Still, the man taking signatures handled everything professionally, and agreed to come back later to get my wife to sign. Thus, I was able to go back to sitting naked in my living room and forgot about the entire event until a few days later.

Why a few days later? Well, I wasn’t expecting another visit so soon and I had worked overnight the night before. When the doorbell rang, as usual I just made sure I wasn’t naked and just went to answer the door. The problem is that I was wearing boxer shorts, black socks and nothing else.

Now, as an aside, I’ve been told that my visage in nothing but boxer shorts frightens children. Its actually a little strange how often that comes up. As for the socks thing… I’ve got no excuse. I was just too lazy to take them off before I passed out at 5am.

So back to the door… It turns out that the same recall worker from Saturday was at the door. It was very obvious that my appearance frightened him. He was quite shaken and barely managed to ask if my wife was home before he said “OK… Um… Don’t worry sir, I wont come back!” and sprinting out of my front yard.

It is because of this that I express my sincere apologies to that recall worker, and to all political canvassers that visit my house in the future. I’ll be frank: I’m not going to change my behavior, but try to take solace in my admission of guilt.

So… Why are there protests?

That’s the interesting thing. It started with collective bargaining rights, and has moved on to a scandal with the Koch brothers, giving direct control over the most liberal state University campus to the governor, potential fraud with supreme court elections, recall elections for both parties, health care and pension scandals, school funding, wind farms, voter ID, child support collection, tax breaks for the rich, and claims of vandalism to the state capitol. Those are just the ones I remember!

I thought I’d share some of the pictures I took of Madison protests during the weekend of March 12th when 100,000 people were there. I have also included pictures of the capitol itself from three weeks later.

I’ve been to a number of the Saturday protests since this started, and went back a few weeks ago (April 2nd) mostly because I wanted to see for myself the7.5 million in damage to the building from protests… supposedly from tape damage to soft stone walls. Of course I didn’t see any at all. The damage estimates have since been lowered to more realistic numbers.

Anyway, I don’t have much to say about the protests, elections, or recalls at this time. Its still too hard to sort the fact from the rhetoric, plus I have to clean spittle off my monitor whenever I start to type about it. For now just enjoy the pictures. Or make fun of them. Or ignore them.

The pictures can be found here.

I’ve also included a few links below in case anyone needs some background:

Interesting article about how the state has become divided.
Article about potential petition fraud
The push to get legislation through before the recall elections (including Voter ID)
The Wisconsin Supreme Court recount disaster.
Breitbart tells Madison to go to Hell

Finally, I just want to say that I wish the best for people in Michigan, Ohio, Florida, and any other state where there has been a major neocon/teaparty power grab to take power away from municipalities and give it to corporations.

(Call transcript here)

My main concern at this point: Even if Walker manages to convince everyone he’s going to accept compromise, he has a line item veto that requires a 2/3 majority to overturn. He can strike individual words, phrases, or sentences to completely change the meaning of a bill. Any bill that does pass through the legislature needs to be worded very carefully.

But then, how can it get worse than its already worded? Killing the public unions and guaranteeing that employees will always get less than inflation rate raises. Eliminating the oversight of the public service commission or legislature in public power plant sales. Splitting the University of Wisconsin into two pieces, one of which will be primarily run by 11 Walker appointees. Wording that leaves a blank slate for state medicare changes, with few changes spelled out in advance and reportedly no checks and balances on how Walker can change medicare in the future.

On the bright side, at least Wisconsin governors no longer have the power to remove individual letters. The “Vanna White” veto power was removed in the early 90s. Serious changes are still possible though: The previous governor actually eliminated over 700 words from one budget and changed the distribution of funds from transportation to education. I happened to support that particular use of it, but I also understand its an example of the practice being abused.

I have to say I’m proud of all the people that have stood up for what they believe in peacefully over the last few weeks, and I fully intend on taking some time to walk among them in the coming weeks.

I’d like to formally suggest that as a form of protest the men flying over the next few months take a viagra prior to arriving at the airport. If anything is going to convince TSA management that the ‘pat-downs’ are going over the line, it will be pat downs of several hundred people with erections.

Besides, it may help you enjoy the process a little more. Of course, the next few hours after the pat down may be a little uncomfortable…

• Massachusetts already has mandatory health care. For the most part people there dont want to reverse it… so why should they have serious care about the National health care legislation? The only thing they’re really missing in the State plans is real price controls. Of course, at this point I’m not sure if I’d support the health insurance legislation without knowing which bill or compromise they end up going with.
• Martha Coakley was either evil or stupid. Look up her history as an Attorney General. Look at how she responded to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force light boards. Look at her name in the news for the last 20 years and how most of the stories do not make her look good. I was confused over how she kept winning Attorney General elections, and I’m confused about how she beat out people with good records in the primary, but I am not confused at all about why she lost the final election.
• The Republican that was voted in (Scott Brown) may not be the worst thing to happen to the Democrats. Democrats have members of their own party that are more conservative/neoconservative than this guy is. Hell, looking at his position I feel the guy is actually more independent than Lieberman. Although he has a lot of stances I dont like, compared to Coakley I probably would have voted for this guy too. For the record, Scott Brown did vote for the Massachusetts health care bill despite being against the proposed Senate bill.
• The ‘independents’ seem to be defined by the media as people that vote on issues rather than by party affiliation alone. We are constantly reminded that independents helped elect Obama on a message of Change. Guess what? Independents elected Scott Brown on a message of change too (but probably not a health care change). People that vote on issues know that the letter next to a person’s name doesn’t mean that a person is automatically smart or evil. After all, Martha Coakley was evil and a Democrat.
• Before the election Democrats had 59 members in Senate. Now they have 59 members in Senate. Of those 59, they have at least 4 members that wont vote for a goddamn thing anyway, so this election did no more to kill health care/insurance bills than they were already doing to themselves. Even if there were 60 Democrats there is no way all 60 will ever agree on a single damn thing.
• Maybe its time for the pussyfooted majority party to start forcing the minority party to actually follow through on their filibuster threats. Make them stand for four days. Make them appear on national news reading books out loud or singing old fight songs. Make them explain why they’re blocking a vote on something. Hell, make them hold themselves accountable.
• If biting the entire thing off at once doesn’t work, start going at it piecemeal. People can understand simple things like “This bill makes it so insurance companies cant cancel you if you get sick” but they cant understand “Here is 1000 pages of stuff thats even harder to read than the Patriot act was”. They can understand things like “Doctors should have to have posted prices just like Mechanics do” but cant understand the difference between a death panel and legitimate end of life counseling.

I could go one for hours, and I’ve already left the realm of the Senate Election. I will now resume my regularly scheduled diet of porn and sarcasm.

The strange thing though is that over the last year the emails have all started to have something in common, no matter who they were coming from. Nearly every single one says, in some way or another, don’t bother replying to this if you do not agree.

See, its OK for them to send me things that I don’t agree with, but not OK for me to do the same in turn. I’m being told in advance they wont bother reading my reply anyway. Nice of them to keep the debate open, isn’t it?

The other trick is to throw in something like “Of course the bleeding heart liberals/traitors/terrorist-sympathizers will not be able to avoid typing an angry response to this” in a way to keep me from replying because somehow they magically brand me in advance.

So I looked through the last three months of email I got from just one relative of mine and made a collage. It was just like going back into grade school… depressing and full of ridicule. Most of the images used in the collage are of the ‘do not bother replying’ variety, but I threw in a few other items from some mails just to give it the right flavor.

Click on the image for a full sized version. Enjoy.

However, I cant ignore how people are protesting and chanting.

Across the country we have people mobilizing and traveling to congressional districts they don’t vote in so they can disrupt town hall meetings and remove the ‘participatory’ part from ‘participatory democracy’. These town-halls were supposed to be a Q&A about intentions and a way for congresspeople to gauge what their voters wanted. Of course, that’s really all they could be since there is no way any congressperson has read all five bills on the table.

In order to help support the disruptive behavior, we have had radio and television talk show hosts repeating talking points that are not only absurd but have been publicly disproven. But, it seems that if you repeat it often enough it becomes true to certain people… just like the birther movement that has so many up in arms. If you have an audience that will fall for that, then it takes nothing to convince the listeners/watchers that Obama personally wants to kill their grandparents and remove veterans health care. Now all you have to do is publish instructions on how to be disruptive and artificially inflate your numbers.

The first question that comes to my mind when witnessing this is… They can read instructions?

The second question that comes to my mind when witnessing this is… Why are they focusing on made up bullshit when there are plenty of legitimate concerns with these bills? In fact, why are these being called health care bills or health care reform when they are really insurance reform proposals?

Hell, there are hundreds of potential problems with any one of the bills… why bother making shit up? Is someone just trying to prove how lazy the American public is? Perhaps this is some sinister plot to prove that being stupid is a preexisting condition? If they want to prove people were stupid couldn’t they just read YouTube comments or any page of VDare like everyone else?

Maybe stupidity is a form of brain protection from cognitive dissonance. See, how else could U.S. citizens be more upset with (absurdly fake) stories about health care insurance bills killing their grandparents than they were about real stories of oil company lobbyists paying for orgies and drug parties? I guess I have to face that not only are people stupid, but that they will only believe what they want to believe no matter what.

For example…
“Government employees would never accept drugs or sex with oil company hookers” is not the truth, but people WANT to believe it. Besides, even the party of religion can overlook a little fucking in the name of oil, right?

“Obama wants to kill my grandma because the health care bills have ‘end of life counseling’ language in them” is also not the truth. But, once again… people WANT to believe it.

So I am left with no other possible conclusion than to think people really want to believe the President of the United States is out to kill their grandparents. This is despite the fact that Obama is not personally authoring bills and every modern insurance plan has ‘end-of-life counseling’ coverage. But aren’t these are the same people that couldn’t believe our previous president could be an unwitting puppet? My how things change just by changing the party affiliation or skin color.

More proof that Americans are either lazy or stupid comes from the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, which already contains end-of-life counseling as one of its perks and has never resulted in a death squad being called out to your local nursing home.

Throwing another absurdness factor into the mix is the fact that so many of the people that are aggressive/disruptive in the town hall meetings on health care insurance are either already on government health care (Medicare) or have no insurance. “I don’t want the government to run my health care” sounds really fucked up coming from a retired or unemployed individual…

For my own part, in the last ten years with my non-government insurance I have had to agree to give up any semblance of privacy in order to keep my full coverage, join a PPO plan that doesn’t let me choose my doctor, accept a ‘maximum lifetime cost’ clause that gets lower every year, and face my wife getting removed from my plan if her place of employment offers insurance (no matter how crappy it is). Compare this to the 1990′s when I had better coverage than this and only worked part time, and I get really fucking confused.

What happened?

But nowhere has it made more of a difference than in the lives of creepy child molesters. See, Clash for Clunkers allows them to trade in their 15 year old panel van in favor of something a bit younger, just they way they like it.

The new vehicle of choice? The 2009 Chrysler PT Cruiser. In fact, they can order it with heavily tinted windows and a TV in the back for the kids! The modern child-seat mounts are a great place to secure handcuffs or baling twine as well!

Now, it is true that they may not be able to keep their victims locked up face down in the shag carpet anymore, but damnit, they still have all sorts of fuel-efficient cargo space to work with! Plus, no more straining to lift those 50 pound loads up above their waist while trying to keep the sliding door from closing on their arms. Now, they simply trip the hapless victim into the back and slam the well balanced door shut, letting the child-safety locks do the rest of their work for them.

Throw in sweet aftermarket features such as remote start, and now the molester on-the-job can periodically run the air conditioning or crack the windows! Whether working at the toll-booth, video store, or airport parking security, rest assured that no more will your laced chocolate bunnies melt into the seats!

Yes thats right, the 2009 P.T. Cruiser: Molesters welcome!

Dr. Washington, What Would Minnie Think?

Characters

• Socrates, a Greek
• Dr. Ellis Washington, professor of law and political science at Savannah State University
• God, a god (mute part)
• Ghost of Stephen Douglass, a ghost (mute part)

~ Dialog ~

Socrates: Welcome, professor Washington. We are gathered here today to examine your life, and find out whether you feel remorse for what you have done.

Dr. Washington: {confident} I believe that I have done nothing to feel remorse for.

Socrates: Did you not write a dramatic dialog in which you put words into the mouth of a dead person? Words which any child knows he obviously would not have said?

Dr. Washington: Yes, I did.

Socrates: Do you feel no remorse for so cheap a rhetorical gimmick?

Dr. Washington: {remorsefully} Yes, I feel profoundly remorseful. It was the disputative equivalent of finding a picture of the man, and drawing on a Hitler mustache.

Socrates: Do you have anything to say in your defense?

Dr. Washington: {defensively} I often gratify myself sexually with a stuffed Mickey Mouse doll, to which I have attached a dildo.

God: {raises eyebrows}

Dr. Washington: Well I say a dildo, but it’s really more a kind of an arrangement of dildos. Its construction was quite involved.

Socrates: Let’s stick to the rhetorical issues. Pretty grade-school, isn’t it? Putting words into the mouths of those you disagree with and then responding?

Dr. Washington: {weeping} Oh, God! I’m sorry, so very, very sorry. Is there no redemption for me!?

God: {examines fingernails of left hand}

Socrates: Let you now submit to your judgment.

Ghost of Stephen Douglass: {teabags Washington vigorously}

Dr. Washington: It may a bit late to bring this up, but perhaps I should mention that I also gratify myself sexually by having short men put their…

Socrates: Thank you Dr. Washington, I think we’re finished.

Dr. Washington: {resignation, utter despair, profound silence, facial expression belying douchebaggishness}

FIN

One is practically driven to lament: O tempora o mores! (Oh Times, oh Daily Mirror!)

Another 30 million dollars may yet be recovered as the shame campaign works its way through the AIG ranks.

However, there is still no word on who authorized the payments to begin with and why they aren’t part of this shame campaign.

Kudos to those that returned the cash, though. Thank you for saving us from another two weeks of watching congress try to get the pigs back in the pen.

But I dont think that the rage is directed at the right people.

All over the news I hear people demanding that AIG provide the names of those that received money, presumably so they can be shamed into giving it back… despite the fact some of them are not U.S. citizens. In fact, some of them are no longer employed by AIG at all! Then we see that a few of the recipients were actually working for parts of AIG that somehow managed to show a profit, despite the rest of the companies failures. Do we take their money as well?

I’m worried about the precedent congress wants to set with taxing bonuses at 90% or more. That seems like tax-code vigilantism that would end up costing us more in the long run. Plus it would actually tempt me to short-sell some AIG stock myself… and the whole idea of short-selling upsets me as it is.

So it remains… the bonuses were legal, and less than .01% of the payout anyway. But congress doesn’t want to look stupid… so instead they’re looking angry and surprised.

So here is my proposal:
Find the person or group that authorized bonuses and fire their asses. Fire them for fucking incompetency and spread their names all over the news so they cant deploy their golden parachute and land in another company and pull the same shit. A form of legal blacklisting. That would send a message to other executives looking for bailout cash at the very least.

Yes, we’re still out the bonus money… but we probably are already. How much legislation has been delayed by the “find a loophole for the loophole” bullshit?

Besides: Firing people is legal already! Look at the unemployment rate and the poor mistresses that have had to give up their weekly massage sessions in order to keep their housekeeper! Yes, firing may result in early termination clauses of contracts being enacted… but the message it would send would cost a hell of a lot less than the current “Lets have congress spend two weeks finding out how to violate liberties of just a few Americans because we look dumb.” The United States government owns a majority of AIG, lets pull some fucking weight and fire some assholes and get this done with.

Then we can get on to revising the standard executive contract. Bonuses are supposed to be given out for exceptional work, not for sinking a company. Contract termination payouts are supposed to be for reorganizations, not for incompetence. Stop company hopping you industry killing assholes! But I digress

Ok. Time to wipe the spittle off of my screen and go back to beating my head against the wall. Some day this will all make sense, and I may finally understand why the government is making my dollar worth less every day. I was actually hoping for some deflation It would make the unemployment rate and some of this other shit seem easier to bear.

When you describe President Obama, please avoid conflicting criticism.

For example, the following two criticisms are not compatible:

1. President Obama is doing exactly what corporations are telling him to, and is not following his own rules with regard to lobbyists.
2. President Obama is ushering in a new age of socialism. He is surely a closet Marxist.

I am not kidding here… The lobbyist thing is actually a very valid criticism. Corporations have always been too close to major political parties, and this is a perfect example of how.

However, you cant call him a socialist in the same breath. Much like during the campaign, when accusations of being a Muslim were uttered in the same breath as accusations of being too close to Reverend Wright, it could end up canceling out. If you want your message to be taken seriously, you cant cancel your own message out. Do the research.

It may sound strange of me to be coming forth with this message considering that I actually like Obama… but damnit, even a guy I like needs to be reigned in sometimes. Plus, we need more people to actually research their fucking news stories.

However, the author has decided to stop releasing the cartoon now that Bush is no longer in office. The last official GYWO cartoon was published on Inauguration day.

Relive the glory days of the Bush administration by reading (or rereading) the GYWO archive here!

Enjoy.