The Party of Love, Once Again

Maine Town Official Visited  By Secret Service For Posting "Shoot The Nigger" Over a Picture Of President Obama

"What I really meant to say is, 'When are we going to get rid of this (expletive),'" Marsters added. "I should have said, 'I hope the bastard dies.'"

Oh, that's much better. 

But don't ever forget, it's the liberals who are filled with hate. 

Barack Obama: Time Traveler

Latest Newspaper Column- The Pilot Newspaper:

Listen: Barack Obama has come unstuck in time.

Recently, the polling outfit Public Policy Polling did a survey of self-identified Republicans in Louisiana. They were asked whether they called themselves liberal or conservative (not surprisingly, 88 percent said they were either “somewhat conservative” or “very conservative”) and who they supported for the 2016 GOP nomination (also not surprisingly for this early stage, answers were all over the map and inconclusive).

But one question resulted in a truly jaw-dropping answer. When asked, “Who do you think was more responsible for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush or Barack Obama?”

Trick question, right? After all, at the time of the hurricane in 2005, The President Who Must Not Be Named was chief executive. The commander in chief. The Big Kahuna. And, let us not forget, he was the guy who appointed the infamously inept Michael “Brownie” Brown as director of FEMA and told him, “You’re doin’ a heck of a job, Brownie,” as people died. Barack Obama was only an up-and-coming but still junior senator from Illinois.

And yet, 29 percent of Louisiana Republicans said it was Obama who was responsible for the botched response. Another 44 percent said they weren’t sure.

I guess this should probably come as no great surprise. This is, after all, the party that blamed President Obama for the Great Recession, even though the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research (the people who keep an eye on such things) pegged the beginning of the recession at December 2007. And lest we forget, John McCain Who Was a POW ran ads blaming Obama for high gas prices during the 2008 campaign.

By the way, did you know that Obama is also to blame for all current racism in America? Yes, the latest Republican trope seems to be that because Barack Obama commented on the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case by observing (accurately) that a lot of young black men have been viewed with suspicion and fear by white people for years, and that that’s actually happened to him, we are now “divided along racial lines,” and it’s all his fault.

Because, as we all know, racism never existed before the Leader of the Free World “stuck his nose” (as they put it) into the issue. Apparently, the right has barely learned to tolerate the president being black; having him mention that he’s had experiences common to black men in America is grounds for yet another explosion of white self-pity and butthurt.

And, of course, it’s an article of faith in the land of Wingnuttia that Barack Obama was personally involved in the IRS “targeting” of conservative groups (even though all the evidence now shows that both conservative and liberal groups were scrutinized). It’s also an article of faith that he personally issued a “stand down” order calling off a rescue attempt in Benghazi and therefore caused the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens.

When I say “faith,” by the way, I’m using the word in the sense of “nutty things they believe and will defend even unto death even in the face of all evidence to the contrary.”

But this idea that, apparently, Barack Obama can travel back in time to screw things up is a new mutation of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

What will the GOP try to blame next on Time Traveling Barack Obama (hereinafter referred to as TTBO)? Will Darrell Issa claim to have discovered TTBO’s voice screaming “Kill Whitey” on the newly released Watergate tapes?

Will we hear Glenn Beck blubbering that TTBO knew ahead of time that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor and did nothing because he wanted to promote a liberal racial agenda by getting America into a war that would eventually result in the desegregation of the U.S. military?

Will Michele Bachmann announce the finding of a secret scroll that implicates TTBO in the assassination of Julius Caesar because he wanted the African empire of Carthage to win the Punic Wars? (I know, Carthage was defeated nearly 50 years before Julius was born, but this is Michele Bachmann we’re talking about here.)

What? You think any of this is too crazy for even the Republicans to say? Friends, in a world where a full 73 percent of the GOPers in the Pelican State either think Barack Obama was in charge of the response to hurricane Katrina or are willing to believe that he was, there is no such thing as too crazy.

What's In a Name? None Of Your Business, That's What

Latest Column- The Pilot Newspaper:

Jaleesa Martin and the father of her 7-month-old-baby boy, Messiah, could not agree on a last name. But when they went to a child support hearing in Cocke County, Tenn., last week, they got a decision they didn’t expect and hadn’t even asked for.

Not only did child support referee Lu Ann Ballew decide the child’s last name, but she took it upon herself to change his first name as well, from “Messiah” to “Martin.” Henceforth, the boy would be known as “Martin DeShawn McCullough,” giving him the mother’s last name as his first name and decreeing that he have the father’s last name.

Apparently, naming a child “Messiah” offended the judge’s religious sensibilities.

“The word Messiah is a title, and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person, and that one person is Jesus Christ,” Ballew said. She contended that the child might have problems growing up with a name like “Messiah” in Tennessee, adding: “It could put him at odds with a lot of people, and at this point he has had no choice in what his name is.”

Asked what the difference was between calling a child Messiah and calling him Jesus, as many Latinos do, Ballew told a reporter she’d thought about that and decided that it “wasn’t relevant to the discussion.” The judge was apparently relying on the ancient legal maxim Claude os tuum, ratio est. (“Because shut up, that’s why.”)

Jaleesa Martin will be appealing the judge’s decision.

Look, I’ve lived my entire life with a name that could most charitably be described as unusual. I’ve heard every lame joke that could be made about my name. I have, for example, developed a deep and abiding distaste for that John Denver song “Country Roads,” thanks to the legions of supposed wits who think it’s the most original thing ever to miss-sing the lyrics as “Dusty Rhoades, take me home....”

News flash: It isn’t, and I’m not going to.

And believe me, I have seen some names pop up, especially on court calendars, that have made me shake my head and wonder what the heck these parents were thinking. But that doesn’t mean that judges, on their own motion, should feel free to override the right of parents to name their kids as they see fit.

I’m not even sure how the question of a baby’s name gets to be an issue in child support court in the first place. In my experience, the only issue in child support is, “Where’s the money?”

Sometimes, it reminds me of the bust-out scene from “Goodfellas”: “You lost your job? (Bad word) you. Pay me. Your car broke down and you spent all your money getting it fixed so you could get here? (Bad word) you. Pay me.” And so on. 

They usually don’t concern themselves with matters like whether the child’s name is, in the judge’s opinion, religiously incorrect.

There are countries, particularly in Europe, where the authorities have veto power of what parents name their children. Denmark, for example, has a list of 7,000 “approved” names (4,000 for boys and 3,000 for girls, which hardly seems equitable).

Deviate from the list, and you’ve got to go through Copenhagen University’s Names Investigation Department and then the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs. That process often takes weeks, during which I suppose the parents just refer to their offspring with the Danish equivalent of “hey you.”

Sweden has a “naming law” that requires that names “cannot cause offense or discomfort” to the person named. Recently, parents protesting the Naming Law tried to name their child “Brfxxccxxmnpcccc llllmmnprxvclmnckssqlb111163” (pronounced “Albin”). To no one’s surprise, they got turned down. A resubmitted petition to name the kid “A” (also pronounced “Albin”) was also rejected.

I’m not sure how either of those was supposed to cause “discomfort or offense” to Albin — who was, let us not forget, a baby. The first one actually sounds kind of like how a baby “talks,” if you drop the numbers at the end. I admit it could make filling out applications problematic in later life.

Some countries, with good intentions, try to control what you can name your children. But by golly, that’s not how we roll here in the good old U.S. of A.

You want to name your kid “Apple” or “Brooklyn” or some girl’s name ending in “i” that pretty much guarantees that at least some part of her working life will involve a stripper pole, or even “Messiah,” that’s your right as an American.

And no activist judge should be able to tell you different.

What's With Putin?

 Latest Column- The Pilot Newspaper: 

What the heck is wrong with Vladimir Putin? Has the man lost his mind?

Is he, as my son suggested recently, acting out like some sort of international brat because he’s jealous of all the attention the Middle East is getting? Is he nostalgic for the days of the Cold War? Or is he just a massive jackass?

Putin’s government recently thumbed its nose at the U.S. and granted NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s request for asylum in Russia, despite our insistence that Snowden be returned.

Snowden accepted, thanking the Russians and quickly settling into his new home, where I’m sure that none of his phone calls or other private communications will be monitored. Because, as we know, the Russians are all about protecting privacy when it comes to phone calls and the Internet.

Another thing that has a lot of people, including President Obama, seeing red is the Russian government’s recent crackdown on gay and lesbian people. Putin recently signed a law not only prohibiting adoption of Russian-born children by gay couples, but also forbidding such adoption by parents living in any country where there are marriage equality laws.

He’s also signed a law allowing the police to arrest tourists and foreigners “suspected of being gay or pro-gay and detain them for up to 14 days,” according to a story in The New York Times. Another law threatens jail time for “homosexual propaganda,” an offense so broadly defined that a person can be arrested for advocating tolerance. Beatings and violence against LGBT people are up all over Russia, with the authorities turning a blind eye.

It’s increasingly clear that the motivation for all of this is pure, classic scapegoating. A totalitarian regime needs an enemy, someone to blame for the loss of some imaginary golden age. Hitler needed the Jews, our homegrown wingnuts blame immigrants, and Putin has decided to pick on gay people to draw attention away from his own shabby failures.

Some LGBT activists are suggesting that the Putin regime be punished with a boycott of Russian vodka, particularly Stolichnaya, even though Stoli’s actually made in Latvia now.

More seriously, some are pushing hard for the U.S. Olympic Committee to declare a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics planned for Sochi, Russia, especially since there’s no indication from Putin that American athletes, coaches or Olympic committee staff who are gay, or even ones who speak out for tolerance, will be safe from arrest, confinement and deportation.

Some Putin supporters are claiming that this is because only straight athletes “meet the ideals” of the Olympics. Apparently they’ve forgotten that the event originated in Ancient Greece, where guys wrestled naked and one of the most famous poets was a woman named Sappho of Lesbos. Yeah, that means what you think it means.

Until recently, I’ve been an advocate of what I call the “Jesse Owens” theory. As you may remember from your history, Owens, an African-American runner, went to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, even though Adolf Hitler saw the Games as a way to promote the ideals of Aryan superiority, and the Nazi party newspaper was demanding that blacks, Jews, and other what they called “undesirables” be barred from competing.

Faced with threats of a boycott, Hitler backed down, and Owens went on to win four gold medals, becoming the most successful athlete at that year’s Games. So I’ve always thought that the best way to deal with bad behavior from an Olympic host country is to get their athletes out on the field and whip their tails, fair and square.

I’d love to see an openly gay athlete, like American figure skater Johnny Weir or New Zealand speed skater Blake Skjellerup, beat the Russian team on the ice (although given Weir’s age, that’s a longer shot than it used to be).

On the other hand, I have to acknowledge the point made by some boycott advocates, like British actor and comedian Stephen Fry (who’s both gay and Jewish) that even Hitler wasn’t threatening to arrest Owens for being black. If Russia’s threatening to lock up our country’s citizens for who they are, or even for advocating for other people’s rights, then yeah, we’ve got a boycott-worthy problem.

Imagine if Putin were reviving the old Soviet-era oppression of Christians by signing laws keeping Christians from adopting children, or saying non-Russian Christians were subject to being locked up and kicked out of the country. A boycott would be a no-brainer in that case, and it should be in this one.

We need to tell Putin if he doesn’t cut this nonsense out, we won’t be sending an Olympic team: We’ll be sending those idiots who picket soldiers’ funerals with “God Hates Fags” signs instead. If that doesn’t back him down, nothing will.

Will You Listen To Yourself?

Latest Column- The Pilot Newspaper: 


It’s often said that a big part of our problems these days is that we don’t listen to one another. This is undeniably true. However, a big part of our problems also comes from people not listening to themselves.

If people could really hear, objectively, some of the stuff that comes out of them, they might reconsider ever speaking again. Take, for example, former Democratic Congress-man Anthony Weiner, now running a campaign for mayor of New York that’s an absolute train wreck.

Mr. Weiner’s sexy tweets and pictures of his manly part, sent over text and Twitter, have already been documented in nauseating and depressing detail. But then it was revealed that in some of his communiques, he called himself “Carlos Danger.” Really? Anthony. Dude. Step back for a moment and take a good look at yourself, and not through the viewfinder of your camera phone.

It’s true that New Yorkers are a tolerant bunch. After all, the last mayor’s wife had to get a restraining order to keep him from bringing his mistress into the mayor’s mansion. The denizens of the Big Apple can handle a womanizer. But if the latest plunge in your poll numbers is any indication, they draw the line at a cheesy and lame one.

Then there’s Weiner’s communications director, Barbara Morgan. Morgan recently responded to an unflattering online tell-all article written by a former intern with a blistering and profane tirade against said intern that I’d love to reproduce for you here, except that not one word in three could be printed in a family newspaper.

Her excuse? She didn’t know she was on the record. Babs, sweetie, listen to yourself for a minute. You’re the communications director. Isn’t it part of your job to know when you’re on and when you’re off the record?

Another person who should probably have listened to what’s coming out of his mouth is Kentucky Sen. and probable GOP presidential candidate Rand Paul. Speaking at a fundraiser in Tennessee, Paul directed a slam at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (also a likely presidential candidate) and New York Congressman Peter King: “They are precisely the same people who are unwilling to cut the spending. They are ‘gimme, gimme, gimme all my Sandy money now.’”

Oh, Randy, no. Are you listening to the sounds that come out of the front of your head? There’s plenty of spending you could have chosen to mention. But spending on victims of Hurricane Sandy? That’s what you’ve chosen to demonize? Do you hear what you’re saying?

Christie, never one to sit still for an insult, responded quickly, noting that Paul’s state gets back $1.51 from the federal government for every dollar it pays in federal taxes, while New Jersey gets back only 61 cents. He sarcastically praised Paul for his skill in “bringing home the bacon.”

Paul then fired back a zinger of his own, describing the portly Christie as “the king of bacon.” Because when you’re having a serious debate on spending priorities, the best way to get your point across is with a fat joke. Stay classy, Senator Paul.

But for sheer “do you even hear yourself?” effrontery, it’s hard to beat San Diego Mayor Bob Filner.

Filner, as of this writing, has been accused of sexual harassment by no fewer than eight women. Apparently, Hizzoner’s preferred seduction technique was to put his intended paramour in a headlock and/or tell her that she should come to work without underwear on. It worked about as well as you’d expect.

What qualifies Filner for the Chutzpah Hall of Fame, however, is his request that the city pay his legal bills for the defense of a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by one of his victims, in part because — get this — the city failed to provide him with sexual harassment training.

“It is my understanding,” Filner’s lawyer wrote, “that such training was scheduled, but the trainer for the city unilaterally canceled. … Therefore, if there is any liability at all, the city will almost certainly be liable for ‘failing to prevent harassment.’” The city declined to chip in, probably because they’re suing him too.

Back many years ago, when I was working in radio, we had what was called a “seven-second delay” — a tape gizmo that allowed us to cut off the transmission if, for example, someone dropped an F-bomb or said something otherwise inappropriate. With all of modern technology, you’d think we could design something similar to strap to politicians so they can think, however fleetingly, about how what they say is going to sound.

What the Heck, Let's Just Go For Full Monarchy

Latest  Column- The Pilot Newspaper:


So the world has another royal baby, and he has a name: George Alexander Louis. His official title will be “His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge.”

What is it with this family and the name George? His granddaddy, the Prince of Wales, is Charles Philip Arthur George, his great-granddaddy was King George VI, and his great-great-granddaddy was King George V.

I mean, I know they’re all about the tradition, but come on, it’s the 21st century. Why couldn’t they have mixed it up a little?

Prince Bubba has a nice ring to it. Or maybe they could defray some of the costs of the monarchy by selling naming rights. Prince Nokia Samsung Hyundai, for example, could bring the family the kind of international branding that’s so important in this global economy.

There was some talk, by the way, that the Prince of Wales intended to rule under the name King George VII. Other sources I’ve read, however, claim he has denied saying that, possibly because it seems a bit rude to pick your monarch name while the current sovereign is still breathing.

Some of England’s pricklier rulers might have even removed one’s head for that sort of thing. Fortunately, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II doesn’t seem the head-chopping type. I’ve seen the look in her eye, though. I wouldn’t want to risk my neck by crossing her.

In any event, the new royal whelp has, like all things royal, captured the imagination of millions of us commoners on both sides of the pond. In fact, some of the gushing I’ve heard over here about the event made me think that if the Brits wanted to reconquer the U.S., all William and Kate would have to do is carry the little fellow between them in a sedan chair, like that picture of the Ark of the Covenant in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and people would just fall all over themselves to surrender.

As always, with a great craze comes a great backlash, with various and sundry commentators raising the old cry that the monarchy should be abolished as an archaic and horrendously expensive relic of a bygone age.

Oddly enough, many of those seem to be coming from Americans. Perhaps the most vociferous one came from Hamilton Nolan of the website Gawker, who wrote a blistering polemic titled “Imprison the Royal Family and Abolish the Monarchy.” Nolan writes, “In a just world, this innocent child would be going up for adoption, since its family would have been imprisoned for crimes against humanity.” It gets worse from there. The rather overheated Mr. Nolan, as noted above, is an American, which raises the question of what standing he has to be so indignant.

In the U.K., on the other hand, a British friend (the talented thriller writer and journalist David Thomas, aka Tom Cain) tells me that only about 18 percent of Britons polled actually want to see the monarchy abolished and that even the most fervent Scottish nationalists promise to keep the queen as head of state.

On the pro-royalty side, Dylan Matthews of The Washington Post recently wrote a column in which he suggested, with tongue only partially in cheek, that the U.S. might be well served by becoming a monarchy — a constitutional one, of course.

“Constitutional monarchies,” he points out, “have an average GDP per capita of $29,106.71 and an average life expectancy of 75.6. All other countries have an average GDP per capita of $12,518.76 and an average life expectancy of 68.3. Point: constitutional monarchies.” In addition, he asserts, the royal family, instead of being a drain on the British economy, actually generates “tiny stimulus boomlets” around events such as the royal birth.

So, hey, why not give it a try? It’s got to work better than the current state of gridlock. The only problem is actually picking a monarch. But does it really have to be? As various royals have shown, a member of the royal family doesn’t have to be particularly smart, talented, or even good-looking (at least if you’re a male). So the choice should be obvious.

Call me Prince Dusty, and feel free to grovel.