Leather Man and His Newly-Aroused Flesh

I guess May Day was also the first day of open season on the LGBT community.

Back on May 13th, some godbag by the name of Charles Worley out of Maiden, North Carolina called for rounding up all the gays, lesbians and bisexuals in an electrified fence and slowly starving them to death.

Just a day or two ago, another Bible-banging lunatic by the name of Curtis Knapp in Seneca, Kansas said that we should spend taxpayer dollars to have the government kill everyone in the LGBT community.

And on the heels of that bit of repressed, self-loathing homosexuality, as if trying to outdo both Knapp and Worley in sheer, shit house rat-on-fire insane, Dennis Leatherman in Oakland, Maryland offers this incredibly revealing TMI moment:

To be… have a tendency to be effeminate or homosexual is just as wicked as to have a tendency to be a womanizer. Sinful nature does not justify sinful behavior. Now what is our take? What is our response? I appreciate your bearing with me tonight. First of all, there is a danger of reacting in the flesh, of responding not in a scriptural, spiritual way, but in a fleshly way. Kill them all. Right? I will be very honest with you. My flesh kind of likes that idea. But it grieves the Holy Spirit. It violates Scripture. It is wrong.

Well, gee, how Christian of you, Leather Man, to throw in that commandment that says "Thou shalt not kill", which was less than an afterthought or a suggestion during all the Holy Crusades.

But is it too much information that this guy, whose name irresistibly brings to mind the adult shop with the blacked-out windows in the red light district where Karl Rove's leather slave does all his clothes shopping, gets his flesh aroused at the thought of killing people?


Because Leather Man getting a woodie over... Oh, sorry, wrong picture.


Because Leather Man getting a woodie over anything, much less killing gays, lesbians and bisexuals, is a thought that's too horrible for mortal man to contemplate. Plus this perverse self-stimulation also brings to mind the fascists of Nazi Germany who went after the homosexuals and the mentally impaired when the concentration camps were first built (which was a mini Holocaust that people still don't talk about to this day. In fact, the gay men first arrested by the Nazis were arrested again after the war based on evidence the Nazis had compiled on them.). And it's essentially a concentration camp that cryptofascist Charles Worley is advocating.

Homophobic hysteria is contagious, to judge by the proliferating plethora of penis-obsessed evangelicals who plainly spend waaaay too much time contemplating the sex lives other people they don't even know. They're openly calling for their deaths while the typically worthless corporate mainstream media continually gives them a free pass as if their spittle-flecked statements are either not serious enough to report or that such jowl-jiggling jeremiads are actually on at least an equal footing as a gay rights advocate who's actually, you know, sane.

And, even though no one in the LGBT community is calling for the death of any of these men, it's notable that these fine, upstanding pillars of their respective communities all have one thing in common: They're all smalltown, white evangelical rednecks who largely make up the demographic that's hoarsely screaming that they're the ones being persecuted and that it's open season on Christians or white men or right proper heterosexuals.

The same exact demographic that whips up losers like Eugene Delgaudio into fever dreams of warehouses stocked to the rafters with pallets and pallets of homosexual propaganda about to be disseminated across the United States in a massive and highly complex yet organized delivery system that would do DHL proud.

Meanwhile, just yesterday it was reported that in Minnesota, Pastor Oliver White lost most of his flock when he publicly came out in favor of gay marriage. As a result, his parish, Grace Community United Church of Christ is suffering through a $200,000 shortfall that could cost the community a spiritual center and house of worship.

Maybe he would've been financially better served and perhaps have picked up some extra parishioners if he, too, had come out screaming that we should kill all the cock-smokers and rug-munchers. But he didn't. Pastor White did the right thing and spoke his conscience.

Perhaps all the homophobic and repressed homosexuals such as Leather Man and Knapp and Worley should found their own denomination where they can all get together and obsess over gay sex and gay marriage and all things gay and leave the rest of the believers to worship without having to hear cherry-picking sermons that seem to be completely based on the clearly deranged Leviticus and Corinthians and not a single bit of the New Testament featuring a laid-back hippie who didn't seem to care about other peoples' sex lives regardless of their sexual orientation.

They can call their denomination the First Church of Our Fuehrer in keeping with their genocidal calls for orientation-based eugenics. All they have to do is bend the ends of their crosses into right angles, which is how the swastika originated, anyway.

And then they can say goodbye to their tax-exempt status on the basis of inciting hate speech and pay their fucking taxes just like everyone else.

Of course, I'd rather just kidnap every rabid homophobe and repressed, self-loathing homosexual, stuff them into a Saturn V rocket and aim them at the sun but that's just me.

I Don't Start Trouble...

...but in less than a week, it may finish us.

Yesterday was like night and day both literally and figuratively. After having to postpone seeing The Avengers with my sons a week ago, we rescheduled for yesterday (Btw, it's the best superhero movie ever, IMHO, and I've literally seen them all). It was the first time the three of us saw a movie together since Spider Man 2 came out in 2004.

So, a good time was had by all and after the matinee we got in the car, left the mall but the boys wanted to stop off someplace for a drink. After walking out of my local Walgreen's, the car wouldn't start. It had been having issues the week prior, starting sluggishly sometimes first thing in the morning. But once it got going, it was fine for the rest of the day.

Not last night. I was stranded with my kids in the Walgreen's parking lot until people had to come from all over to rescue them and take them home. As if that wasn't humiliating enough (it happened 8 years ago), I had to fight tooth and nail with AAA to get them to rescue me because the membership is in Barb's name and she was at home a mile and a half away. After talking with a supervisor, the guy agreed to let me act as her proxy for this one time.

By the time I finally got the car towed to my regular mechanic and walked the rest of the way home, it was close to 9 PM. It seems to be a bad starter, even though I'd had it changed out roughly a year and a half ago. Back then, the job was about $265 and it may be even more now. And, like millions of other people, in six days it'll be time to put money either directly or indirectly into a bank's pocket so we can keep a roof over our heads for another month.

If it had to happen, at least the car had the courtesy to die close to home and not in Worcester or Franklin, Massachusetts, which is where I was on Monday and Tuesday, respectively, for job interviews (both places are about 20 highway miles from our house). But bottom line, less than a week before our rent and electric bills are due, we got slammed with what'll surely be another $250-300 bill and we'd surely appreciate any help you could give us so we don't wind up on the street come June first.

Addendum: The garage just called. The job's almost $400, which is going to set us way back with the rent due on Friday.

Chocolate Microscopes and Mark Zuckerberg

“They raised the range on the offering literally two days after the underwriters called around saying, ‘lower your numbers for the second quarter.’ Those two things don’t go together, ever.” Hugh Evans, T. Rowe Price

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

One of the most amusing things of watching a story like the Facebook IPO implode in real time like a still-new and glittering Vegas hotel is how the mainstream media's coverage also adjusts its tone and focus. Every once in a while, by processes, powers and Byzantine prognosticizing that escapes even those of us in the game, certain stories get anointed The Lead by the journalistic Powers That Be. Even more insidiously and whether by design or not, they're given an almost universal bias. And whatever the bias, it's decided by some upper echelon consensus denied those of us who are actually in the inky trenches that such stories take precedence over all others. Some of these stories justifiably cry out for more ink and air time, such as the 9/11 attacks.

Other times, however, we have jammed down our throats balloon boys, runaway brides, starlets' pantieless crotches, Anna Nicole's death and Iraqi WMD. Then they feign shock, shock, I tells ya at their own ignorance. And such ignorance and getting caught with its collective pants down itself becomes the story. It's a seedier version of Spiderman going after the crook who killed his Uncle Ben after having aided and abetted his escape.

The Facebook Initial Public Offering or IPO that hit the gilded shelves of Wall Street on May 17th was another of those stories. True, even without hype by the corporate media, it was one of the most highly anticipated IPO's in Wall Street history, certainly the most eagerly awaited internet IPO. The Dotcom bust of the 90's? What Dotcom bust?



The resultant media frenzy, largely thanks to the NY Times, which has led several times with the Facebook offering since the 17th, gave Mark Zuckerberg's Initial Public Offering all the frenzied hype, hence all the dignity of a cross between the 19th century gold rush in the Klondike and a Japanese game show, especially those featuring greedy pikers who are supposed to grab as much money as possible in a massive cash cube.

It was another instance of Wall Street manufacturing money out of thin air, on pure speculation. And, while there's nothing wrong with a little speculation among friends (life itself is a risk, after all), no one, least of all the mainstream media, stopped to ask us or themselves what could possibly go wrong? Especially when it was known who'd be underwriting the IPO (Morgan Stanley) and since it was widely reported early last year that another crooked, bailed-out entity, Goldman Sachs, pumped a half a billion dollars into Facebook (that story even begins with the deliciously ironic sentence, "Bubble? What bubble?").

What could possibly go wrong? Potential for insider trading, lying to investors, sharing privileged information only with "favored clients" and company executives so they can parachute out safely while the rest can burn in this Hindenburg of an IPO? Why, with $100 billion at stake, that's never happened before.

"Chocolate Microscopes?" "Approved."

In a 1995 episode of The Simpsons, Who Shot Mr. Burns, Pt 1, Springfield finds out it has a vast reservoir of oil in its midst. As it often does in the real world, this was a massive windfall for the town, including the school education budget. While Principal Skinner is taking recommendations from all comers, resident paste eater Ralph Wiggum asks, "Chocolate microscopes?" and it's immediately given a big red rubber stamp of approval.

The Facebook IPO once again brought out the avariciousness of people but not just the Wall Street psychopaths who benefited the most from it but smaller investors who were lured, as are most of us, by the unctuous assurances of easy money and "a sure thing." And as everyone who's ever spent one dollar on the lottery can agree on, there's only one thing that's better than earning a lot of money and that's not having to earn it.

There is so much that's wrong with the Facebook IPO and with Facebook itself down to their Ralph Wiggum-class business model of not charging people to do their thing while almost half completely ignore your sponsors' ads (as a study released the same day of the IPO's unveiling found) that I hardly know where to begin.

It reveals on the most superficially pragmatic level the greed of people from virtually all walks of life (at least those smaller investors who can afford to sink more than a couple of thousand into stock speculation). It reveals the goldfish attention span and longterm memory of the corporate mainstream media that apparently never remembered after the first commercial break or when the fish was wrapped with their papers the Dotcom bust, Enron, Worldcom, the two halves of the TARP bailout and the reasons for the nationwide Occupy protests.

Now they're going from breathless headlines of, "Will Zuckerberg Make $100 billion off Facebook IPO????????" to much more subdued but still leading stories such as, "After 33 Years, Police Make Arrest in Case of Etan Patz." Huh? Etan Patz? A 33 year-old murder mystery anticlimatically solved when the guilt-riddled murderer turned himself in? Oh, Grey Lady, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me???


Actually, perhaps the incipiently forgetful and demented Grey Lady is doing Zuckerberg a favor, perhaps by design, by not making the latest allegations of fraud, insider trading and lying to investors their lead story or anything close to it. And the first day the IPO went public, even as it was beginning to fall faster than Wile E. Coyote with an anvil shoved up his ass, the biggest story of any preemptive maneuvering was Zuckerberg getting married just after the Public Offering was put on the NASDAQ bidding block, inviting sleazy speculation of a prenup that was bigger than a Reader's Digest big print edition of War and Peace.

Turns out it was a lot sleazier than that and it wasn't as if supposedly savvy investors, a jaded MSM and top executives from Facebook and the participating banks (the infamous Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America) didn't know nor care to repeat an oft-told tale.

It involved certain "favored" investors (presumably those who'd put up the most cash, such as Paypal Founder and Facebook executive Peter Theil, who made almost $850,000,000 in one day. Zuckerberg took in about $1.13 billion to pay his back taxes) while smaller investors were left in the dark about Facebook's downgraded status at the same exact time Facebook increased the number of available shares by 25%. In the days leading up to the IPO's unveiling, it was reported that Facebook had run out of shares, so many people were riotously throwing so much cash at them. It was Ponzi 2.0 and still no one thought anything was untoward when Facebook magically pulled another 25% out of its fat, blue ass and inviting stock dilution and inflation.

You'd think more people would've been more pragmatic to realize that Zuckerberg stole the very concept of Facebook from Harvard University and boned the Winklevoss twins out of what could've easily have been billions or that Zuckerberg had long since positioned himself to avoid paying most if not all of his taxes (as if being worth $27 billion by age 27 isn't more than enough to hold him for the rest of his lifetime) and that one of Facebook's co-founders renounced his US citizenship once it had outlived its usefulness and fled the country (which the right wing scumbag Chamber of Commerce cock puppets at Forbes, typically, actually praised).

You'd think more people would've looked at Facebook's Mr. Bill business platform that involves no goods, no real socially redeemable services and was predicated largely on selling your private information to corporations very similar in sociopathic tendencies to those that had invested so heavily and had underwritten the much-hyped IPO.

If nothing else, the Facebook IPO that, barely a week after its debut, has already resulted in more lawsuits than a Cray could count starting with Facebook's rank-and-file investors plus an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and two congressional investigations. Regardless of how stupendously crooked this IPO was even before the bell rang on Day One, it's hard to feel sorry for so many morons who were so easily duped when they should've known with whom they were climbing into bed.

It also reveals the Inner Circle mentality of Wall Street with its largely unpunished culture of insider trading and protecting "favored clients" from any serious fallout, starting with the people who can afford to lose the most starting with Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Theil. I seriously hope Mark's Mini Mes who got boned by this IPO bought a lot of chocolate microscopes because they may be only thing that'll sustain them during this next and unlearned object lesson in greed at the Big Leagues.

Sorry I Had to Do This

Sorry I had to switch to word verification but I've been getting hit hard with spam from all over the internet. In the one and only good change in the new Blogger, all the spam comments are automatically weeded out by the system and kept in a separate spam folder so I don't have to reject them individually. But they're still a pain in the ass to read. I don't imagine too many of you will be very pissed off about this change considering that spam comments are the only fucking ones this blog ever gets, anymore, anyway.

If Fox "News" Was Around Back Then, Pt 2

The News at a Furtive Glance: Read Pravda or We'll Shoot This Dog, Comrade edition

In advance of the NATO pow-wow in Chicago later this month, the Chicago Police are doing what the Chicago Police do: making calculated, surgical arrests and literally disappearing activists without even valid warrants. In fact, the disappeared aren't even shown the warrants until four hours after their illegal arrests and without a judge's signature (that helps if you're running a fascist police state). Add to that the FBI and Secret Service are jamming cell phone tower signals during the summit, meaning the entire city of Chicago has to suffer. These assholes must really miss the 60's and are bound and determined to bring back the good old days when Daley's goons were literally cracking down on protesters in 1968.

---

In a totally related story from CBS News, jets from NORAD have been conducting flying exercises (i.e. war games) over the streets of Chicago in preparation for the UN summit. They'll have orders to shoot down any plane that violates restricted air space. Yes, they're ready, willing and able to shoot down aircraft over one of the most populous cities in the United States. Apparently, someone at the Pentagon's been watching too many Michael Bay movies.

---

Speaking of Nazis, you'd think a bill as nakedly fascist as this would have just the Republican Party's fingerprints all over it. But this attempt to lift the ban on government propaganda actually has bipartisan support in the House. Yes, that's right. Uncle Sam is petitioning for the right to mislead us once again when we're supposedly in peacetime and in no threat of martial law. Damn, and I was getting accustomed the government's neverending truth and transparency.

---

Speaking of bipartisan support, in the higher chamber, we're closer than ever to going with war with Iran over its nonexistent nuclear weapons. In other words, we're about to go to war with a Middle Eastern nation over WMD that don't exist when we're already at war with Afghanistan. Oh no, I don't think they're using a playbook at all. We're not at war with Iraq, comrades. We're at war with Iran. We've always been at war with Iran.

---

Meanwhile, closer to my neck of the woods, Fatherland Homeland Security and the MBTA are planning on releasing allegedly dead bacteria into the Boston subway system as a simulated biological terrorist attack. Oh, yeah, they're also not telling commuters when these tests will take place. As if taking mass transit to work wasn't exciting enough. Sounds like the makings for a sci fi direct-to-DVD movie to me. I'd consider walking to work for the rest of the year, if I were you.

---

In that vein, some fucking geniuses in the Netherlands and Wisconsin turned an already deadly virus into an airborne virus. The H5N1, which has made hundreds of people sick for 15 years now, isn't very communicable. So scientists wanted to see if it could be turned into a more contagious strain by turning it into an airborne virus. What's even more ominous is that our government has stepped in and has strongly "advised" against dissemination of the findings.

---

You'd think that after the clusterfuck at the Fukushima Plant in Japan last year, that could still be ten times worse than Chernobyl if the fuel rods somehow ignite, we here in the US would be on higher alert and would ramp up evacuation and other emergency drills. If that's what you thought, you'd be wrong because we've actually done the exact opposite. Says the AP:

Without fanfare, the nation's nuclear power regulators have overhauled community emergency planning for the first time in more than three decades, requiring fewer exercises for major accidents and recommending that fewer people be evacuated right away.

Nuclear watchdogs voiced surprise and dismay over the quietly adopted revamp — the first since the program began after Three Mile Island in 1979. Several said they were unaware of the changes until now, though they took effect in December.

At least four years in the works, the changes appear to clash with more recent lessons of last year's reactor crisis in Japan. A mandate that local responders always run practice exercises for a radiation release has been eliminated — a move viewed as downright bizarre by some emergency planners.

---

If you know of Lori Price's Citizen's Legitgov newsletter and have dismissed it as full of conspiracy theories, think again. If it was simply that, then why is it being greylisted and blocked from being electronically delivered, especially to AT&T customers? Lori herself writes, "The subject line of the most recent newsletter was, 'Lawyers Guild claims NATO activists 'disappeared' without warrant or charges.'" Hm, that story sounds familiar. Remember, comrades, censorship and abrupt disappearances is one of the telltale signs of a totalitarian sta

Inside the Douchebag Studio

What follows is the video portion of a longer article written for NY Magazine by the impossibly urbane James Lipton of Inside the Actor's Studio. The purpose, however ultimately fruitless, is to make the polymer-based Mitt Romney look and sound actually human. (Tip o' the tinfoil hat to Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors.)

Missouri: The Don't Show Me State.

I've long suspected the only thing keeping blood pumping through the reptilian brain of the typical right winger is the evolutionary gift of an immunity to irony and hypocrisy. Otherwise, if waddling brain stems like Rush Limbaugh were as vulnerable to the effects of neverending irony and hypocrisy and as subject to the slings and arrows of conscience, we'd obviously never have half the problems we have in this nation.

Take Rush Limbaugh's induction into the Missouri Hall of Fame a couple of days ago. With many more pressing issues with which to deal, the GOP-led Missouri legislature ramrodded through a bill to enshrine Limpballs into the state HOF. They deliberately waited until the last legislative session in order to hedge against any debate and the impotent objections of the Democratic Governor of Missouri and 35,000 petition-signing protesters.

Then the Republican Speaker of the MO Senate, Steve Tilley, waited until 20 minutes before notifying the press of the ceremony and banned all Democratic lawmakers from the induction ceremony after ordering them to remain civil. The entire event was guarded by Missouri Highway Patrol who were there in a paranoid attempt to protect Rush in case a discouraging word was allowed to escape and creep into his hearing aid.

And they seemingly had no problem charging the Missouri taxpayer God knows how many tax dollars for this obvious attempt to rehabilitate Rush's "good" name at a time that his lap dog Steve Tilley decided he needed it the most.

So how did Rush return the courtesy to Democrats who were ordered to remain civil and were subsequently banned, anyway? By saying from behind doors that were locked for the first time in living memory, out of earshot of his critics, "Our so-called friends on the other side of the aisle are deranged."

Uh huh.

This is coming from a hypocritical Oxycontin abuser who plainly thinks he's above the law and insists we should just forget about his substance abusing criminal behavior. This is coming from a guy who was caught coming back from an island notorious for its child prostitution rings with a bottle of Viagra in someone else's name so it couldn't be traced back to him.

This is coming from a guy who wished President Obama (hence America) would fail hours after Mr. Obama's election to the presidency then developed an unhealthy and creepy fixation on a First Lady who's the most socially-conscious, hip, beautiful, intelligent and loveliest since at least Jackie Kennedy.

This is coming from a guy who, like Andrew Breitbart, Neal Boortz and so many other honorary KKK Grand Dragons, wastes no opportunity to lambaste blacks, women, gays and anyone else who doesn't subscribe to Rush's razor-narrow view of the world.

We owe him civility. Right.

What Tilley did was typical and part and parcel to the psychological side show that the latter-day Republican Party has become: Pass a bill in the dead of night, at the end of a legislative session in a fascist attempt to preemptively squelch any dissent or debate on it then remove from the resultant event anyone who'd been just as ruthlessly preemptively deemed "the opposition" in order to force some ridiculous simulacrum of consensus and legitimacy. His joining such august company is, on a smaller scale, what it would look like if they put Mickey Mouse's head on Mount Rushmore.

Because his induction comes at a time when he's cost Premiere and Clear Channel countless millions of dollars in advertising revenue for his three day-long misogynist rant against Sandra Fluke earlier this spring after she'd testified before Congress for the right to women to get their contraception funded through their health care plans.

And the man who was caught (but mysteriously never charged) with coming back from a hotbed of child prostitution with a bottle of someone else's hard-on pills was in an ignorant lather about Sandra Fluke (whom he called a "slut" and a "prostitute") having so much sex she needed tons and tons of birth control.

Rush's induction into a Hall of Fame honoring giants of American history such as president Harry Truman, Walt Disney and Mark Twain is so much Viagra for Limbaugh's career at a point when he needs it the most if you're a right wing pus bag like Limbaugh. And the hugger-mugger circumstances of his induction, with its policy of exclusion and strong police presence is part and parcel to a German-class brand of fascism of which they audaciously accuse Democrats on the rare occasions they lock doors in their faces.

The Difference Between Romney & Hitler

Happy Mother's Day

Our Worse Half: The 25 Most Embarrassing States

There's good and bad in everything in life. Philosophies, bodies of literature, religion, etc. We take, use and appreciate what we can and ignore, hate or lampoon the rest. The same is no less true for the United States.

For the last seven and a half years, I've been meaning to write a post in which I list the 25 most embarrassing states in the union and why I find them so loathsome and cause for chagrin. No doubt, some of you reside in these states so before you hoot and holler that I've unfairly included your home state, let it be known that this does not personally reflect on you and your beliefs or ideology. I am well aware that every state on this list has exceptions and if you're reading this, chances are you're among them.

Some will also question why I left out other states. Their exclusion should in no way imply, nor should you infer, that I hold the absent 25 states faultless. Every state has conservative and/or evangelical influences acting against human progress, thereby automatically disqualifying them for infallibility.

Consider this an abstract and necessarily subjective overview concentrating on the political and social notoriety that's come, however fairly or unfairly, to characterize your state. For example, New York, which made the list, is my home state, and I have family in Florida and Idaho, which also made the grade. All continental regions have been represented, from the northeast to the midwest to the deep south to the wastelands of the west. Several states, such as Illinois and North Carolina, are included because of shame the Democratic Party had visited on them.

Having said that, probity forces me to admit that relatively recent developments in many of these states are leading me closer and closer to the conclusion that the Civil War should've been ceded to the South, allowing them to be separated from the Union for the common good like the deformed conjoined twin it is. This would've resulted in a vastly diminished United States, obviously, but considering our neverending adventurism in places such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Iran, El Salvador, Lebanon, Yugoslavia, Grenada, Afghanistan and elsewhere, would a diminished military capacity be such a bad thing?

Therefore, I offer in ascending order the 25 worst and most mortally embarrassing states in America (plus a dishonorable mention), a necessarily subjective list that nonetheless has benefited from serious, sober and informed judgment over the past seven plus years.

---

25) California So predictable, it couldn't ad lib an aftershock after a 9.0 earthquake. As if electing Reagan their Governor in the 60's didn't teach them a lesson, they again elected a flabby right wing former actor who made Jesse Ventura look like Adlai Stevenson. Despite an undeserved reputation for liberality (especially in a Hollywood that gave us Reagan, Arnie, Charlton Heston, Stallone, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, etc), its voters were blinded by Mormon money and outlawed same sex marriage five months after it was ratified. Fields the most notably corrupt and batshit insane Republicans in the history of the Republic (Jerry Lewis, Dana Rohrabacher and until recently, the aptly-named John Doolittle etc.) Elevated to international prominence Darryl Gates and the LAPD street gang. LAPD and Oakland PD openly competing for annual Most Fascist Police State award. Fabulously famous and funded LA DA's office couldn't convict Robert Blake or OJ. Epicenter of a decades-long water war favoring rich white people and starving brown people despite such struggles not afflicting more pervasively arid states such as Arizona, Nevada and Utah. An ongoing future object lesson in the power of persistent denial and a source of much entertaining speculation of when it'll at last have the consideration to break off and drop in the Pacific like the dessicated, bauble-studded turd it is.

24) Maine There's a reason Stephen King bases most of his most horrifying stories in Maine. The only New England state to make the bad grade, it could be accurately summed up as the other Mississippi. Sharing a tuber-based kinship with fellow potato-producer Idaho, its residents' faces and intellects tend to resemble their main export. Notoriously right-leaning, it recently elected as Governor a Christie clone, the noxious Paul LePage. A Tea Bagger Republican, LePage is so hostile to unions that he ordered removed a mural extolling the history of the Maine labor movement in the state Department of Labor building. LePage is so stupid, he thinks the Dept. of Labor ought to act in the interests of Big Business like the Chamber of Commerce. Like California, repealed gay marriage but before it became a reality. Women so homely they once envied those of Soviet Russia and Albania. Its residents are so ignorant the state bird is the dodo. They have a few cute tourist trap shops run by semi-toothless proprietors who attempt to ridicule "flatlanders" in spite of all but one square mile of New England being hilly. State motto: "Ayah."


Fun fact: The Ozark drama Winter's Bone was filmed in the middle of Maine's capital of Augusta.

23) New Mexico

The Baghdad of the west's most profitable industry is serial killer Billy the Kid (who was born in New York City) and Roswell paraphernalia. Aside from being in the way during the world's most famous UFO crash and providing bleak scenery for spree killer/road rage movies, New Mexico's only other utility is in being the Bikini Atoll of America for the nation's manufacturers of nuclear weapons and missiles. So nondescript and otherwise useless, the Mexican government filed an injunction to get New Mexico to change its name. Never again reached its peak relevance since cartoons of its state bird were in production. State motto: "Come and bomb the fuck out of us, stay for the alien pancakes."

22) Illinois The worthy successor to legendarily corrupt Tammany Hall, Democratic machine politics was perfected by the Daley crime family of Chicago, a bunch of vicious sociopaths who would have scared John Wayne Gacy straight and Al Capone into paying his taxes. Once known for its slaughterhouses, the state's economy is completely based on selling elected officials' seats, building contracts and mob hits. Has produced so many corrupt chief executives, Joliet has announced an ex Governor block to be formally opened by convicted felons George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich. Once hosted, then immediately tore down, the 1893 World's Fair and the killing spree of HH Holmes. Nurtures inferiority complex with New York City, which arrogantly boasts of higher murder rates and police brutality cases. Had the sense to foist off Ronald Reagan on to California. State bird: The spotted jail bird. State motto: "You have the right to remain silent..."

21) Oklahoma The litterbox of the Appalachias, Oklahoma is such an inferior state it can't muster better than 21st place on this list since its biggest claim to fame is its aspiration to be a second-rate Texas. Further justification for inclusion in the 25 worst states: Senators James "Let's bring in a sci-fi novelist to explain the hoax of global warming" Inhofe and gynecologist Tom "Breast implants are good for you" Coburn. State bird: An oil-slicked Canada goose. State insect: Tom Coburn.

20) Delaware The other Rhode Island, tiny Delaware is renowned as "the first state", hence a defective miniature prototype. Its sole industries are as a sky dumping ground for neighboring Jersey, papers of incorporation for tax-dodging corporations and interstate toll booths every 50 feet. Gave us Joe Biden and Christine O'Donnell. Hopefully, will one day share the same fate as Pluto and be demoted from statehood and made a suburb of Trenton, New Jersey. State motto: "Please come back, we didn't mean it."

19) Georgia Before "Georgia on my Mind" was made the official state song in 1979, it was "Praise the Lord and Pass the Chicken Before They Lynch That There Nigger." Inexplicably identified with a virtually nonexistent hairy fruit, Georgia, outside of Atlanta, sustains itself on a hate-based economy. Long a bastion of pro-white sentiments (as opposed to racism and prejudice against blacks), Georgia boasts more white hoods and wooden crosses manufactured than any other state in the south. It took forever antebellum Savannah through John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil to remind America that Georgia had actually been rebuilt after being smashed flatter than an Irish pizza by Sherman. Ray Charles loved Georgia only because he couldn't see it. Still thinks the Civil War is just in a lull. During Jimmy Carter's failed presidency, it indeed rose again like a Paula Deen souffle then in late 1980 it fell when Reagan slammed the oven door. State bird: The rednecked peckerwood woodpecker. State motto: "What we have here is a failure to excommunicate."

18) Idaho Indistinguishable from Maine only with more mountains and guns. Proud host of Ruby Ridge massacre. Produces mentally ill writers such as Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway. Once sold off a town to Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, who would later pick up stakes and leave town in worse shape than the Nakatomi Tower at the end of Die Hard. Sen. Larry Craig's tap dancing routine reminded people Idaho potatoes are actually named after a state. Long a haven for cross-burning, "pro-white", anti-government fanatics, Idaho is a perfectly good waste of mountain scenery and sparkling clean air.

17) Kentucky Like Tennessee, known almost exclusively for sourmash whiskey as well as horse racing and discolored grass. Its residents have no concept of the word "upgrade" as they replaced nasty honey badger fuck Jim Bunning with Ayn Rand Paul, son of racist Ron Paul. Its other Senator is Mitch McConnell, a man renowned for finding an endless variety of ways to say No and transplanting his testicles into his neck wattles. Would've been almost completely forgotten to posterity were it not for Louisville Slugger bats. After that and whiskey, its chief export is coal miner corpses. Hosts the Creationism Museum. By all rights, should be demoted from statehood and annexed by Ohio to be used as a city landfill for Cleveland. State bird is the pterodactyl with a human rider.

16) Tennessee The proud cradle of post-Civil War racism, this KKK crib is otherwise known as the place where science goes to die and for growing carcinogens and making Jack Daniels whiskey. In true deep southern tradition, is notoriously homophobic and antiscience. In fact, Tennessee recently achieved a dubious relevance again with the Scopes Monkey Trial Redux. A nearly complete national and international embarrassment, Tennessee's Republican legislators also consider geology, chemistry and avionics mere alternative theories. Global warming spokesman and former President-elect Al Gore is reviled because he spoiled the state's otherwise pristine record of denying science for over two centuries. Proudly hosted MLK assassination, offers opera for rednecks, gave Elvis a haven to gain 150 pounds.

15) Utah The world's biggest outdoor salt mine and adopted home to a cult that believes their God lives on the planet Kolob and Jesus will return in Rush Limbaugh's home state. Oh, yeah, and they believe on blind faith this all comes from a Golden Bible that was seen by no one but a womanizing horse thief. With due respect to the Udalls and Rocky Anderson, Utah's sole value is in providing a haven for a cult that's intolerable to the other 49 states and a huge runway for Mormon gamblers on their way to sin city. Produced and inflicted Orrin Hatch and Karl Rove on the rest of America, providing us with grounds to pour water on it and dissolve it out of existence. As it is, they were made utterly irrelevant when land speed racer Craig Breedlove retired.

14) Alabama As with Georgia and Mississippi, its very name is colloquially synonymous with cross-burning, bedsheet-wearing racism. No shit, during the 2000 election, Alabama became the last state to finally lift a ban on interracial marriages, making it the Boston Red Sox of the deep south. Often compared to pre-Cambrian Upper Volta, Alabama gave us Dixiecrat George Wallace, whose likeness is still proudly displayed on Alabama's #2 export (#1 being mirrored sunglasses for redneck sheriffs), which is commemorative plates of him standing in front of a school door. Gunracks commonly seen on baby cribs, more confederate and Gadsden flags displayed than American ones. Is so conservative, gravity is considered a theory and globes are legally banned. Proud host of race riots and black church bombings when blacks had the nerve to opt out of impossible-to-pass litmus tests before being allowed to vote. State motto: "Where's the fire, city boy?"

13) Mississippi Coolness factor peaked in 1935 when Elvis Presley was born. Excelled in murdering civil rights workers with impunity. One would think with all the hurricanes this coastal state has seen, at least part of Mississippi would be washed clean but BP had other plans. With its John Grisham-based economy, Mississippi's only other export is its most intelligent citizens fleeing Ole Miss for a better life. Is so racist, only white and flesh-toned crayons are allowed in schools and colored chalk must be used on separate but equal blackboards. Since all the birds indigenous to the Mississippi Gulf coast succumbed to oil exposure, the state bird is the gnat. Next to last Governor, Haley Barbour, was first lard sculpture ever elected in state history.

12) New Jersey The septic tank and smoking room of America, New Jersey can be smelled as far as away as Chernobyl. HBO series The Sopranos actually made Jersey society seem cooler and more attractive than it actually is. Its Governor is a noxious blimp named Chris Christie who's so out of shape he has to take a limousine ride in the 100 yards between his helicopter and the field where his son plays ball. Rode to his inauguration in a stolen car with attached plates. Fled Jersey during a blizzard to go to Disney World then had the nerve to defend his dereliction of duty. Has been compared to Fiorello LaGuardia with a brain tumor. Famously antagonistic toward teachers and unions and others who know more basic shit than him. Supports the troops by calling a decorated Navy SEAL an idiot. Is so polluted, Jersey residents aren't allowed across the river into New York without a clean bill of health from the CDC. Snooki and the talentless cast of Jersey Shore reviled outside of Jersey for reminding the other 49 states that New Jersey exists. State bird is the mud hen.

11) Michigan

One would think a state surrounded by so much water couldn't be as dirty as it is but there you go. Gave us Mitt Romney and Eminem, which is almost forgivable by its also giving us Michael Moore. Its biggest city, Detroit, was once the auto-making capital of the nation before car companies realized they could save a lot of money by outsourcing US jobs overseas (ask Mitt Romney about the time his old man put 450 people out of work- it's a knee-slapper). Detroit residents not allowed into Canada before submitting to a criminal background check. Major cities such as the aforementioned Detroit and Flint now double as post-apocalyptic wastelands for the occasional Hollywood movie. Its principle industries are home foreclosures and scrap metal stolen from abandoned buildings. Michigan GOP successfully bringing back the Nazi Party by instituting one-party rule through an attempt to subvert Matt's Safe Schools law and illegally passing an emergency city manager law in which a right wing tea bagger appointee's authority supercedes that of all local democratically-elected officials. Leavens emerging fascism by giving us comic relief in the form of the Detroit Lions. State bird: The iron eagle.

10) Ohio The Buckeye state cracked the top ten largely on the strength of it being the headquarters for Diebold, one of several right wing companies that determined the course of the 2000 and 2004 general elections. Fabulously corrupt state Republican Party that will soon need a prison all to itself. Yet another misguided state with a Tea Bagger Koch head and former Fox "News" host as a Governor. While running for office, John Kasich actually said that the US hasn't lost a single job to China, "(e)ven though he sat on a corporate board and signed documents to do just that." In fact, Ohio's biggest export is Ohio manufacturing jobs even while handsomely paying corporations in nonbinding gentleman's agreements to not do just that. Only cultural center is Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Post-LeBron James Cleveland Cavaliers the new foil for the Harlem Globetrotters.

9) Alaska Thank you, Secretary Seward. Proud host of the second biggest oil spill in national history. Only two significant cultural contributions to the nation were a Charlie Chaplin movie filmed in California and Klondike bars. Gave us Ted Stevens and Idaho transplant Sarah Palin. Outside of Fairbanks, Juneau and Anchorage, residents must mush on dogsled for 40 miles to nearest outhouse. Being trapped between Bering Strait and western Canada ensures against negative population growth. Famously right-leaning largely due to cranial hypothermia. Were it not for Big Oil, Alaska would have no economy, no culture and no identity. Quitting halfway through her only term as Governor and beating it out of Alaska was the first and last smart thing Sarah Palin ever did. State bird used to be the penguin until Sarah Palin declared it a mammal.

8) New York Characterized by a city inexplicably called the Big Apple when, in fact, the Manhattan skyline looks more like a diseased pineapple, its residents saw fit to elect as their mayor a multibillionaire media mogul who changes political parties more often than Rush Limbaugh changes his underwear (which perhaps may not be saying much). The legendarily vicious and homicidal Five Points section in southern Manhattan and every resident was moved by Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall to Wall Street where its mentality flourishes to this day. New York City enjoys a multifaceted yet strictly compartmentalized economy: Wall Street (fraud), Avenue of the Americas/Fifth Ave (propaganda), and in the area immediately surrounding 42nd and 8th Ave, pornography. Most recognizable cultural icons are the Naked Cowboy, who isn't naked, John Gotti, Carson Daly and Joey Buttafucco. Involuntarily hosted two of the three worst terrorist attacks on American soil, which made America want to hand the Yankees their 27th World Series title and, briefly, Rudy Guiliani the presidency. Long Island and upstate New York do not really exist, being fabrications to make the rest of New York state seem tolerable to the rest of the country. State bird: The vulture, in honor of Wall Street. State motto: "Ya fuckin' stronzo, I'm tryin' t' walk 'ere!"

7) Kansas Thomas Franks said it all. Virtually the only state in the union with fundamentalist principles so backwards it makes Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi look more liberal than a drug commune in Copenhagen. Its chief executive is former senator and escaped mental patient Sam Brownback, a man so conservative he thinks Burl Ives was possessed by succubi for singing "Holly Jolly Christmas." Has the only school districts that teach asexual education. Last year, Brownback cut off government funding entirely for the arts in Kansas. Also creepily stalked and persecuted teenaged girl Emma Sullivan for criticizing him even though she didn't. A perfectly good waste of dust. State motto: "Burn the witch!"

6) Wisconsin Voted out Russ Feingold and voted in Scott Walker on same night. Winter last year, Wisconsin and its capital Madison become ground zero for a union battle waged by its new Chief Executive who retains the sole distinction of being the only cross-eyed Governor in America, having the most lopsided hairdo since Reagan and one of only ten Republican Governors who immediately take calls from the Koch brothers. Accidentally drove to Green Bay on inauguration day because Walker thought it was the state capital. Besides Walker, Wisconsin has produced two other psychopaths: Ed Gein and Jeffery Dahmer. Wisconsin is such a huge embarrassment even the Arab world noticed it and threw their support behind the protesters. Just to prove he wasn't merely elected to butt fuck unions like the knobby, unlubed corporate strap-on he is, Walker recently repealed the equal pay law that protected women workers. Repeal is imminent as Walker has proven to be about as popular as a neo Nazi rally in Tel Aviv. Republican hatchet man Rep. Paul Ryan universally acknowledged as the most hilarious thing to come out of Wisconsin since Lenny and Squiggy and Bret Favre's transmitted penis. They still make cheese, that fact alone keeping them from making the top three spots.

5) North Carolina The very fact that North Carolina produced Klansman and senator Strom Thurmond alone guarantees inclusion in the top five. Most recently, North Carolina took the heat off the states at the top of this list by slamming the door shut on gay marriage knowing fully good and well that inalienable rights shouldn't be put up to a vote. As a result, Rep. Barney Frank introduced a resolution on Capitol Hill demanding that North Carolina be henceforth known as the "Shitheel State." So racist that toasters and pumpernickel bread are outlawed. So embarrassing to more progressive North Carolinians that Andy Griffith demanded all episodes of the Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry RFD be retroactively placed in South Carolina. Former Democratic Senator and human dolphin John Edwards currently on trial for misspending campaign funds and reminding us of Bill Clinton again. Their fetid swamps breed mosquitoes and Blackwater. State motto: "North Carolina's For Inbred Lovers Provided Ya'll Ain't Gay."

4) Florida #1 indictment: Voted in Alan West the same night it voted out Alan Grayson. Completely fucked up 2000 presidential election because the rest of America was naive enough to assume Floridians could actually fucking count beyond 10. Their Tea Bagger Governor, multimillionaire health care tycoon and Woody Harrelson evil twin Rick Scott, makes Jeb Bush look like Hugo Chavez by conspicuous relief. Poet Elizabeth Bishop called Florida "the state with the prettiest name" just as "leukemia" has the prettiest name of any cancer. Federal government maddeningly dragging its heels for funding for a massive plug that would drain this state that's 79% swamp. Indigenous insects larger than most Italian sports cars. Its chief industries are cocaine trafficking, pink flamingos and various and sundry comic fodder. Resembles a discouraged penis. There was a reason why Nikita Khrushchev pointed his missile bases at it.

3) South Carolina Jesus God, where does one begin? Started the Civil War over a half-forgotten lump of rock and in doing so plunged its fellow inbred states to doom, ridicule and poverty for the next century and a half. Senators Jesse Helms and Jim DeMint alone demands that South Carolina be condemned by acts of both Congress and God Almighty as DeMint is so conservative he makes the mentally deranged authors of Leviticus look like the Big Lebowski after a dozen White Russians. SC Congressman Preston Brooks actually beat and almost killed Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner in Senate Chamber. SC's restraint and civility have nosedived since then as the most famous phrase to come out of South Carolina since then is, "You lie!" during a presidential address even when the president wasn't lying. Bringing to mind Nero, their Governor Nikki Haley is half human, half horse. Inexplicably produced Stephen Colbert, the only sane conservative to emerge from that state. Intelligent design fanatics may have a point as meteors in outer space somehow change course by themselves to hit South Carolina.

2) Arizona The second-biggest embarrassment to the United States was reluctantly admitted to the union only in 1912 when John McCain was 41. An oversized Zen garden sans the tranquility, Arizona is the only state run by a Peruvian mummy. Until the Koch Brothers' proxy in Wisconsin got elected, Jan Brewer and the GOP statehouse made the state the most reviled in the union largely on the grounds of SB 1070, a bill that would make Nazi Germany blush and/or envious. Brewer also denied the use of Obama's stimulus funds for organ transplant candidates. Renamed Cinco de Mayo the "5th of May" out of respect for white people. Arizona's arid soil is aerated regularly by Barry Goldwater turning in his grave. Barack Obama almost decided not to run for re-election when he learned that elevating Gov. Janet Napolitano to a Cabinet-level position elevated Jan Brewer to the corner office. Maricopa Co. Sheriff Joe Arpaio unacknowledged inspiration for Yosemite Sam. State bird: The condor. State Motto: "Papers, please, mein herr."

1) Texas

The Man on a Ledge of the United States, special needs Governor and former Bush second banana Rick Perry once threatened to secede Texas from the union over stimulus money. Backed off when every other state gleefully called his bluff then reminded him he couldn't legally secede. Called the Lone Star State because the other 49 states don't want its star on the American flag. Yahoo-style frontier justice executes more people than Stalin in his most paranoid year. State officially annexed to 9th circle of Hell on completion of unholy trilogy, which was when Ann Richards and Molly Ivins died and George W. Bush got re-elected. Essentially stole a huge chunk of worthless desert from Mexicans and Indians and to this day bray about how much bigger everything is in Texas. Most noteworthy event in its history was getting its arrogant ass kicked at the Alamo. Despite Rick Perry's prayer/pity party, aka the Response, Texans still don't get the message that God, with Perry's own help, is trying to kill them through drought. Nick Nolte recently honored as most intelligent man ever produced by Texas. State motto: "Remember the Alamo's gift shop on the way out!" The state bird is Texaco's Pegasus.

Dishonorable mention: Colorado Proudly hosted the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson, the alleged death of Ken Lay and the Columbine school massacre. One of the hubs of the military industrial complex, its biggest industry is making shit that murders innocent brown people. South Park well-noted for its realistic appraisal of Colorado life. Home of the right wing Coors family and a massive canvas Christian revival tent known as the Air Force Academy that occasionally teaches military stuff to officer cadets. They make and use lots of ski wax and was once the backdrop for Mork and Mindy.

A Crime is Forever.

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

Greg the Gut and Eric Bollweevil of Fox "News" (henceforth known as the temporary official propaganda arm of the Kolob star system) hit a new low yesterday.

While paying lip service to the Washington Post "hit piece" on Mitt Romney savagely attacking a gay student with a pointed, sharp object in 1965, the right wing hosts not so subtly turned the conversation around to a completely unrelated, irrelevant and hardly equivalent matter: President Obama's drug usage as a young man. But Gutfeld and Bolling couldn't stop at that. No, after saying that Willard shouldn't be held accountable for a crime he'd committed (which today would be a felony and a hate crime, at that) in 1965, Gut and Bollweevil decided on the spot that Obama's drug use in the 70's and admitted by Mr.Obama in a 17 year-old book was fair game. Then the right wing part of the panel turned into an high tech lynch mob when Bolling said, without any basis, that the future president of the United States was a drug dealer.

There's so much that's wrong with this video that space and time forbids unpacking this right wing pogrom's assertions. But this goes to show how hysterical Fox is becoming over the inevitable re-election of Barack Obama. While I don't condone illegal drug use of any sort, one must make allowances for the culture of the time (and no, I don't consider homophobia and violent attacks on gays to be a legitimate part of any nation's culture). One must also make an allowance for the fact that the future leader of the free world was a fallible human who got some idiocy out of his system. Mr. Obama even wrote in Dreams of My Father that by the time he'd matriculated at Columbia University, he'd "stopped getting high."

In other words, the president learned from his mistakes and when his academic career was kicked into a whole new and much more serious level, he cleaned up his act and knuckled down.

Contrast that with the Mitt Romney/John Lauber incident of 1965. Mitt Romney targeted a closeted student who was rumored to be gay and cravenly assembled a posse to back him up like some right wing, spittle-flecked Scott Farkas because he lacked the balls to take on even a defenseless gay boy one on one, and viciously attacked him with a pair of scissors.

As stated in yesterday's post by Jurassicpork, Willard Scissorhands didn't suffer any disciplinary action whatsoever while the victim was expelled from the same Cranbrook prep school for smoking a cigarette outside of any of the buildings, meaning that, while every one of the students were supposedly equals in the cream of society, some were more equal than others and that definitely included the son of the current Governor of Michigan, Mitt Romney.

While the President of the United States learned from his mistakes and realized that mild drug use led to no advancement, Romney in his hastily-constructed denials and ersatz apologies yesterday in the Fox universe has obviously learned nothing. While his campaign (and Fox, in the echo chamber reverberating and getting amplified between themselves and the Romney campaign) is denying or downplaying these incidents of cruelty and homophobia as minor and unsubstantiated, the timing of the WaPo article (which benefited from no less than five sources, one of them a former GOP county chair, who were there and witnessed the Lauber/Romney attack) plainly due to the Obama administration, Romney still showed in no uncertain terms that he simply doesn't get it.

Being an acolyte of a glorified cult that's seen more than its share of hatred and criticism, you'd think that even coddled Romney would have some insight as to what it feels like to be singled out for persecution and derision, especially since numbers more than suggest there are more gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the US than there are Mormons.

This is part and parcel to the mindset of the sociopath that is Mitt Romney: An utter inability to feel any empathy for the victims of any crime or prejudice even when he himself must have been the object of prejudice and ridicule. It's obviously way beyond Romney's capability to imagine what it would've felt like to have a "posse" of angry students hunting him down and pulling his Mormon fundie undies in a vicious wedgie simply because he was a Mormon.

And Fox "News", in its conveniently-constructed echo chamber that goes from the Romney campaign to Fox to right wing bloggers and back to Fox again in their ongoing, pathetic attempts to manufacture consensus, obviously never asked this question and are themselves incapable of seeing the hypocrisy of holding against the president minor infractions that hurt no one and written about 17 years ago while declaring that Romney's own high school "hijinx" are off limits and irrelevant.

Plus we can be assured that even growing up into a middle-aged, supposedly more mature man, Romney essentially bullied a commission that was mandated to protect LGBT students from bullying by threatening to cut their funding while Governor of my home state of Massachusetts. Willard claims this was all done in the name of fiscal responsibility but it doesn't wash when one remembers the fascist GOP in Romney's home state of Michigan essentially trying to do the same thing with Matt's Safe School law. Obviously, Romney never learned from his mistakes at Cranbrook and, if anything, has doubled down on his vicious homophobia.

Hatred and homophobia are never irrelevant. And the fact that people in the LGBT community in the 60's weren't protected by civil rights laws doesn't make Willard's cruel, sociopathic and despicable acts against gays and the disabled any less crimes against humanity.

Mister Willard: Hair Stylist to the Elite

Stop me if this sounds familiar (although I won't stop even if it does):

Uptight, right wing douchebag with a well-connected father in politics, a failed athlete and cheerleader, assaults fellow students at an elite school with complete and utter impunity then, decades later, denies any recollection whatsoever of the incident.

If it sounds like Gary Trudeau's recollections of George W. Bush, you'd be wrong. It's the WaPo's expose of Willard's time at Cranbrook, Michigan's most elite prep school.

According to five of Willard's classmates (including a dentist, two attorneys and a principal who'd later become a county chair for the Michigan GOP) at the time,

John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors... The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall.

Predictably, the selectively amnesiac Romney campaign is circling the wagons and refusing to address the issue as if it's currently under litigation. Romney himself claims not to remember the vicious attack (and perhaps he doesn't. Do you honestly believe that Willard remembers the name of every US worker he ever threw out in the street?). However,

His campaign spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, said in a statement that “anyone who knows Mitt Romney knows that he doesn’t have a mean-spirited bone in his body. The stories of fifty years ago seem exaggerated and off base and Governor Romney has no memory of participating in these incidents.”

Campaign officials denied a request for an interview with Romney. They also declined to comment further about his years at Cranbrook.

Well, Romney's canned apologies for any pranks "that went too far" fell on the deaf ears of Mr. Lauber, who passed away eight years ago. And Willard not having "a mean-spirited bone in his body" is pretty much belied by the Seamus incident, a classic case of animal cruelty that you commonly see on Animal Planet, one for which one could and should be imprisoned and fined. But if you're Willard Romney, you can get away with that. At the time of this incident in which Willard briefly and brutally (and, ironically) pursued a career as a hair stylist, his Daddy was the Governor of Michigan. All the same, because he was the crème de la crème de la crème, surely the political fallout and being the son of a powerful public figure would've necessarily involved comeuppance?

Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened.

Posterity similarly fails to record any comeuppance when the son of George Herbert Walker Bush burned red hot coat hangers into the flesh of his classmates, burns that Bush fils had compared to a mere cigarette burn (an altogether humane way of showing fraternal love and affection since a lit cigarette burns at 1112° F.).

Romney's own brushing off of the incident, given (naturally, in a hastily-scheduled phone interview mere hours after the WaPo publishing the article) to Fox and Brian Kilmeade, is suspiciously but typically bereft of remorse:

“I don’t remember that incident,” Romney said, laughing. “I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case.”

No, that was precisely the point. Other classmates remember when Lauber would stand up to speak in class, Romney would shout, "Atta girl!" (Note to you, asshole: They're no longer called "homosexual" but "gay." If you insist on calling gays homosexuals, then we reserve the right to call your Marvel Comics "religion" a cult.)

Romney's attitude toward Mr. Lauber, who was openly gay, reveals many things that went to form the ruthless and sociopathic businessman he'd decades later become: Lack of humanity and compassion, combined with an absolute and complete absence of restraint or self control, created one of the first of many, many victims of the actions of Willard Romney, a psychopath who still laughs about his cruelty, refuses to recognize it as cruelty and didn't stick around long enough to see the damage, to hear the postscript.

And it is this:

The victim of Mitt "He With Impunity" Romney, John Lauber of South Bend, Indiana, was subsequently expelled from Cranbrook for smoking a cigarette. It was as if he'd never recovered. He led an aimless, drifting existence that nonetheless led him into public service of some sort. Long after Willard dodged the Vietnam draft by claiming Mormon missionary status and cycling through France while living in a palace fit for a king, Lauber served food to civilian contractors in war zones such as Bosnia and Iraq, automatically making him more conversant about the effects of war than a coddled, pampered right wing coward like Mitt Romney will ever be.

40 years after Romney's triumphant graduation from Cranbrook, the Governor of Massachusetts was invited 40 years later to a triumphant return. Lauber had died young in a Seattle hospital the year before, completely forgotten and permanently so were it not for the Washington Post's article. Decades after the incident, Lauber's former classmate, GOP country chair John Seed, saw him at an airport. He mentioned the incident.

“Hey, you’re John Lauber,” Seed recalled saying at the start of a brief conversation. Seed, also among those who witnessed the Romney-led incident, had gone on to a career as a teacher and principal. Now he had something to get off his chest.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t do more to help in the situation,” he said.

Lauber paused, then responded, “It was horrible.” He went on to explain how frightened he was during the incident, and acknowledged to Seed, “It’s something I have thought about a lot since then.”

It's a lifelong reaction, a trauma, actually, that Mitt Romney and sociopathic scum like him don't even recognize much less feel remorse for. It's absolutely indistinguishable from the bullying that today is the rightful target of so much intolerance, bullying of gay students that is now an offense punishable by stiff fines and even stiffer jail time. Just because Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, it does not mean we should sweep this under the rug and pretend it didn't happen or, like Romney, downgrade it to a mere harmless prank. If anything, this deserves to become as viral and undying as the Seamus incident and to paint an even more complete picture of the monster that is Willard Romney.

To Wingnuts

Dear Eugene

A letter that I just had to send to Eugene Delgaudio, noted repressed homosexual:

"OK, listen up, you pathetic, homophobic asswipe:

At first, you were amusing. I'd written a long, satirical post about you a year or two ago. Jon Stewart had briefly mentioned you on The Daily Show but your 15 minutes had long since passed. You became tiresome and unfit even for parody. I unsubscribed to your updates, to which I'd never subscribed, in the first place. Months passed. Then earlier this year, I found that I'd been resubscribed, again, without making any effort on my own part to do so.

Seconds after I send this to you, I will unsubscribe yet again then block your email address but before I do this, I need to tell you something:

Your feverish, sweaty, bug-eyed conspiracies about Obama-sponsored homosexual Coup de têtes and warehouses filled with homosexual propaganda (that, for some reason, you were allegedly trolling in the dead of night) immediately reveal you as a closeted homosexual. A recent scientific study conclusively proved that those most loudly railing about the LGBT community are more often than not repressed self-loathing homosexuals such as yourself. To paraphrase the bromide, the squeakiest wheel gets the semen.

Unfortunately for the LGBT community, you are not the colorful, sweet gay man who loves and accepts everyone at face value and simply wants the same rights as every other tax-paying American citizen. No, you are the dark side of homosexuality. You are the self-repressing, self-loathing kind who not only denies who he is, but you would seek to deny basic, inalienable rights to your fellow homosexuals. You seem to believe in your funhouse mirror of a mind that, if I loathe myself and my own kind loudly and long enough, I will eventually expunge the gayness in me.


You are to the rest of the gay community as fellow gay-baiter Fred Phelps is to the Democratic Party: An embarrassment, so much so that Phelps' affiliation with our party tempts us into forming another party into which he and his inbred ilk, hopefully, will not follow us.

The homosexual community does not need people like you in its midst. There's nothing you can do about being gay, no matter what Marcus Bachmann and other repressed "Pray the gay away" gay men say. I would think, with North Carolina's noxious Amendment One passing by a 61-39% margin last night, you'd be elated. But apparently, self-loathing fags such as yourself won't be appeased until others like you are eradicated from the earth.

But here's a clue, moron: Gay and bisexual people like me have been around since the dawn of human history and will be around as long as mankind endures. And the sooner you accept that as a matter of immutable fact, the sooner you can come out and swish around in a mesh shirt in the Castro while singing show tunes between sips of your wine spritzer.

Or you can do the truly decent thing and walk past the Castro, muse on what could've been and take that last long step off the Golden Gate Bridge. Don't forget to tie a cinder block or two around your neck for good measure.

If the Bible Was Still in Manuscript

It's long been my contention that if the Bible was a new work of fiction instead of the old work of fiction it really is and trying to pass muster with other unpublished properties, it wouldn't cut the mustard. On account of the mass murder, rapine, persecution, homophobia and batshit insane contradictions, so much would have to be edited out that we'd be left with the first page of Genesis, the Song of Solomon and little else. Generally, it'd either be ignored by literary agencies or dismissed with form rejection letters. But if it were to get an in-depth rejection letter, this is what it would sound like.

---

Dear Authors:

We appreciate the look at your work, The Holy Bible. After long and careful consideration, we regrettably decline to offer representation of this property. While time constraints forbid our going in depth as to why we pass on projects, we'd decided to break with our longstanding policy because we felt this work deserved further commentary. What follows are some of our reasons for passing on your project.

First off, while fiction such as this might've been placed and even sold in a less politically-correct day and age, the incessant images and glorification of mass murder, misguided retribution, homophobia, misogynism and Dominionism makes it unfit for a more sophisticated and sensitized latter day readership. Take, for instance, the beginning of your book, Genesis, in which Cain slaughters his brother Abel. Fratricide is a theme that's been done to death (no pun intended) and there is no rational motive as to why Cain killed Abel. Plus, since there are only three other people in your Garden of Eden, it miserably fails to inspire Coleridge's "suspension of disbelief" if you intended on writing a murder mystery. Plus, with two men (father and son) and only one woman, that means the human population would have to be perpetuated through incest, which would make it pornography appealing to a very small niche readership and we do not represent erotica much less niche erotica.

Secondly, we'd have to reject it for other genre-based reasons. It appears as if you'd written this in an almost purely allegorical way. But by insisting on writing in metaphor, you're making this into a fantasy and this agency doesn't represent fantasy. I refer you, for instance, to your "Exodus" chapter re the burning bush, Moses parting the Red Sea and Aaron's staff turning into a snake and eating the other snakes. Likewise Lot's wife and the 10 plagues which, on a purely visual basis, is mildly interesting. As a conceit of fantasy, however, these 10 plagues can follow one another scientifically, rendering the fantastic aspect null and void. For a better idea of how uplifting and engaging fantasy can be, read J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Thirdly, if written as a moral text, there are troubling inconsistencies and an extremely disproportionate inversion of priorities. Take, for example, your character Onan, who was smited by your major protagonist (antagonist?) for masturbation. Your Leviticus chapter was especially unbalanced from a purely mental and emotional health standpoint, as it endorses similar smiting of homosexuals, touching the skin of a pig, planting two different crops side by side and simultaneously wearing two different fabrics. Meanwhile, your protagonist/antagonist God gets to smite others both individually and on a massive, global scale for what are today considered minor offenses. If you wish this book to be believable and authoritative as a moral tome, you need to excise the hypocrisy.

Not only that, the human supporting characters are never any match for God, Lucifer, Michael the Archangel and other empowered major characters. In order to achieve dramatic tension, there must be some level of parity and soluble conflict in order to make your fiction engaging.

#4, if this is intended to be written as a science fiction novel, we once again have to remind you that we do not represent sci-fi/speculative fiction. We appreciated the UFO sighting in the Ezekiel chapter but better books in the UFO subgenre have been written by Whitley Streiber and others.

#5, on a more abstract plane, every agent in this agency feels that there are absolutely no sympathetic or likable characters save one and that is Jesus Christ in the second half of your book (i.e. The New Testament). While this saintly community organizer has admirable intentions (e.g. healing the sick, accepting no repayment for good deeds, feeding the poor and hungry, etc), we feel this character would be either rejected or ignored with a more conservative readership that is opposed to what they would consider Socialist behavior. Unfortunately, as we'd just said, this renders null and void the possibility of keeping your Jesus character in any fair copy of this work.

Plus, the fact that you offer four different but virtually identical accounts of the life of this Jesus character automatically makes three of them redundant.

In summation, publishing your book (loftily described with great hubris, I'd like to add, as "the greatest story ever told") in its present form would require so many excisions and edits that we'd be left with the first page or two of Genesis and perhaps the Song of Solomon (magnificent poetry, granted, but, as with all other literary agencies, we do not represent poetry). The realities of the publishing business being what they are, properties by pre-published authors have to be camera-ready and your work, The Holy Bible, is not even remotely fit for public consumption, At the very least, it would be a fruitless, uphill battle to place it with a publisher.

Please pick a genre and stick with it then place it with an agency that represents that genre. As it is, we rep mainly fiction and nonfiction that has a mainstream appeal and your work is so confused in its focus and so out-of-step with political correctness that its inherent moral repugnance would render it unfit for publication by any reputable publishing company outside of Threshold.

Sincerely yours,

etc etc.