Krazy Kompassionate Konservatism

Every once in awhile, right wing republicans will accidentally take off their mask to reveal the unpleasantness buried underneath so called 'compassionate conservativeness'. Check out this article for instance.

His genius idea is that people should be able to vote multiple times based on how much money they have. Fucking fantastic! This just goes to show how progressive today's modern conservative is. After all, why shouldn't we go back to the days when only land-owning white men could vote. It sure would solve a lot of problems that black people, the poor and women have caused over the last 80 years or so.

My favorite part, however, is his idea that there should be a limit to prohibit Hillary Clinton from getting too many votes, cause after all, she is the richest democrat in the world and nothing but pure evil (based on her having a vagina and an opinion simultaneously).

Which brings us to tonight's debate. Many people are hopeful that Kerry will score a big victory, but I'm far too pessimistic. After all, how much worse could Bush screw up and still hold such a following. I'm pretty sure that he could spend the whole hour sucking his thumb and making fart noises and 40% of the population would think that it made him 'real'...

Saint Kentucky Fried Chicken

I'm still bummed out that St. Kilda (St. KFC) got beat in the semi-finals by Port Adelaide. Even worse was the way that Melbourne completely collapsed at the end of the season.

Oh wait, I nearly forgot, no one outside of Geelong gives two Koala shits about the Aussie Football League. Uh.... Go Ichiro!

AIR at the Hollywood Bowl

Went and saw the french band AIR at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday night. Stereolab and Sondre Lerche opened.

What an incredible show! They played with the Hollywood philharmonic orchestra which really lended itself well to a lot of their music. The place was completely full and the crowd was really into it. Our friends brought a picnic dinner, and so we drank wine, scarfed down sandwiches and enjoyed the shit out of the show.

During the encore, the one and only Beck came out to do a song with the band.

You Must Be This Eurotrash to Enter...

We spent sunday night at The Standard Hotel on Sunset in Hollywood. It's a 'uber-hip' hotel that really goes the extra mile to cater to Arab and European ideals of what Hollywood is like.

The decor is decidedly modern. Hanging plastic chairs, shag carpet and a freakin' DJ next to the registration desk. At night, the space behind registration, which is basically a glass display case, has a girl lying on her stomach reading in it. Just lying there like a hamster waiting to get fed pellets. I couldn't help but wonder what that job interview must've been like. "So, can you lie down and read? Great, you're hired. Here's your white pajamas."

The pool area was completely overrun with the gorgeous and bored, shelling out $12 for a mediocre mojito while they talk loudly about what clubs they're going to ruin that evening. Overall though, I have to recommend it. If you're going to stay in Hollywood, you might as well experience its fakeness for real.

Home of the Virgin Connie Swayle

We spent last night in Orange County. The O.C. is basically a complete hell hole, but it does provide us with an opportunity to catch up on guilty fast-food pleasures like Del Taco, Fatburger and Rubio's.

We spent the evening looking through one of my nephew's yearbooks. Out of the 1000 or so students pictured, I would say at least 3/4 belonged to some sort of christian organization and about 9/10 were blonde and good looking. Compare this to the page after page of mouth breathing retards in my 1987 high school annual and one thing becomes apparent. Kids are paying a lot more attention to the way they look these days. Actually, their parents are probably the ones paying, for extensive plastic surgery.

Parking Lot Camping

So we visited family members last night that were at Pismo Beach 'camping'. This involved sitting on folding furniture in a paved parking spot big enough for one car, next to 500 other parking spots filled with 2000 other 'campers'. This isn't camping, it's sitting around in a parking lot eating undercooked food and swatting bugs.

What's the point of this? It's not quiet, it's not pretty, it's just like setting up a tent in a mall garage except that you're nowhere near an Orange Julius.

Wait a minute! I hate Ted Koppell!!

No, wait, I don't hate him, I find him witty and informative. What I do hate, however, is white people, and there's no one whiter than The Shriners.

Tonight we checked into the Best Western Hotel in Arroyo Grande, California (just about 2 miles south of Pismo Beach). Luckily for us, the hotel was completely filled with Shriners, toting their trailers of little cars. They sure are a hilarious bunch, or at least they seem to think so. Whether it's honking their horns to each other at 7 in the morning or making the same joke every time another one of their ilk walks into the lobby to check in. "Boy, they'll let anyone stay here. Yuk, yuk, yuk".

SoCal awaits

Going down to Los Angeles for a couple of days, mainly to see the french band Air play at the Hollywood Bowl, but we're gonna get in some friends and family as well.

Sorry so short but I'll report back on Monday. Until then, entertain yourself Dammit!

Ha ha, just kidding, please let me entertain you!!!

What are you gonna DO with your life!!???

I generally live in a constant state of confusion about how I want to live my life. From huge aspects to the minutest detail, I constantly waver back and forth.

Tiny apartment in the middle of the city or house/large apartment in the suburbs? The convenience of not owning a car or not having to put up with public transportation? Amassing a bunch of material crap or having the freedom that living light provides?

It's a constant 'grass is always greener' scenario. Whichever side I'm on at that moment, I find myself feeling envious of those who have less/more.

I'm actually boring myself to tears writing this, so I apologize to anyone reading it. This is turning into just the sort of 'high school journal' crap that's clogging up the internet...

Tiki, Hawaiiana and poseurs galore

Went to see the Tiki Now exhibit at the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco last Friday. Overall, I found the show to be pretty boring. Shag's stuff is great, and there were a few interesting pieces, but overall, once you've seen one Tiki, you've seen them all.

And while I love a lot of the whole 'mid-century modern', 'swanky' lifestyle, an event like this really brings the poseurs out. That and holding any event in the tenderloin with free wine makes sure that you have a healthy mix of effite, trust fund pomposity and pants-filled homeless.

Everyone's Hell is Different

Went to watch football yesterday at the Englander Pub nearby in San Leandro. As a sports bar and place to catch games, it's pretty good. Lotsa Tvs and pretty good food. It's only draw back is that it's in the east bay, and is full of people from the east bay.

During the entire second half of yesterday's action, two Seahawks fans (which makes it even worse since I myself follow them) were cheering on their team in a loud, obnoxious way, screaming at every goddamn play. Now don't get me wrong, I encourage and appreciate passionate fans, but these two forklift operating douchebags were really over the top for no good reason other than to obviously let off the steam caused by their failed marriages and unwanted children.

At one point, the bartender was serving us drinks during one of their screaming sessions. He just turned to us deadpan and said, "Welcome to my personal hell.". The two people I was with agreed and pointed out that you always think being a bartender in a sports bar would be a dream job, but after a couple weeks, you would probably swear off sports altogether.

At the end of the game, the two dipshits screamed the countdown, which caused the bartender to once again roll his eyes and let us know how happy he was that the game had ended. Amen, brother, and I apologize for everyone else from Seattle.

Gung Hay Fat Bachelor Party

Every once in awhile, something so surreal, so strange, so David Lynch-esque happens that it makes you question everything you have ever known. Usually, this kind of shit happens in Chinatown.

Last night was Jim Gallagher's bachelor party. We started off innocently enough at a divey Chinatown dump called the Buddha Bar. After a round of shots and taking over the otherwise empty joint for an hour or so, we staggered onward to Specs in North Beach. Fun, but not eventful. We went back into Chinatown to hit the Green something or other on the corner of Jackson and Kearny. It was a great asian dive bar.

Then IT happened. Tom and Jeff guinea-pigged around the corner and simply said, "If you've ever loved David Lynch, you have to come to this place around the corner.". And so it begun...

We walked down the stairs into the dark, creepy entrance. We were then confronted with 50 or 60 couches, lined up back to back, lit in red, and filled with suspicious looking chinese people. On one wall was two huge screens, playing chinese karaoke, and in the couches were chinese men, singing romantic love songs in chinese to their girlfriends. So of course, we stayed for awhile. Just about long enough to almost get our asses kicked. We convinced several of the 'roaming dates' that it was Jim's birthday, made a few people want to get out their num-chucks and left.

If Blade Runner ever fucked Blue Velvet, it would be Club Lamour on Kearny.

The Amazingly Christian Race

As a public service to those of you suckers that leave the house and aren't held and tortured 'aboo-Gareff' style by your Tivo, heres everything you should know about what's happening on 'The Amazing Race';

This couple pictured above, Brandon and Nicole, are models and devout christians. They've been completely unable to go 2 minutes without mentioning 'the lord' or 'jesus' or 'the lord jesus'. From missing planes to getting a hangnail, nothing is too trivial for them to call upon the services of their 'concierge in the clouds'.

At one point in the game, they took what's called the 'fast forward'. It means they can skip a whole bunch of shit and just go straight to that episodes ending point. They were in India at the time and in order to jump ahead, they had to participate in some sort of ritual wherein you get all your hair cut off. They refused to do it, lost a bunch of time, but were saved by it not being a real elimination round. Once they were saved, they went on another gospel inspired 'thank you jesus' session, trying to break Kurt Warner's record for saying 'God' in 5 minutes of national television. This wouldn't be so annoying (I take that back. Of course it would.) if they didn't earn their living as MODELS. I believe that Vanity is still one of the seven deadly sins and I really, really hope that they get to the entrance of heaven and that it's explained to them in easy to understand language that they are FUCKING HYPOCRITES who embody everything the bible is supposed to be against. To these people, God is like some children's story character. "He's whoever you want him to be. If you need change for the bus, just pray, a good hair day, just pray, if you need to make money and friends off your looks because your personality sucks, what do you do?

Pray, of course. I'll continue to watch just to see how much they thank God when they get SARS from an infected monkey in the phillipenes...

Hey, I got an extra $5. I think I'll throw it in the street.

Of the many things that baffle me about republicans, one of the things that puzzles me the most is their constant, unwavering belief in 'trickle-down' economics.

Apart from being a really stupid concept (If the super rich are made a little richer, they'll suddenly start giving all their money to the lower and middle class!), it already FAILED once. The Reagan 'boom' went bust after about 5 years and wound up causing far more damage in the form of huge deficits.

What the average moron doesn't understand is that people who are born into incredible wealth don't act like the toothless inbreds who win the lottery. They don't blow their entire fortune on Nascar merchandise and more lottery tickets. They keep it and use the money to continue to become more and more out of touch with anyone who works for a living. If you had $100 and someone gave you another 20, are you gonna throw that $20 at the first homeless guy you see? Probably not.

One of my favorite recent quotes from George W Bush was that most environmental abuse is caused by 'corporate poverty' and that if we put more money into the CEOs pockets, they won't need to cut corners and dump arsenic into the nation's rivers. That's BRILLIANT! Using that line of logic, there isn't a problem in the world that can't be solved by throwing more money at the super well off. Perhaps if middle and lower class people were forced to pay 75 or 80% in taxes and that money was just given to the head of Pfizer, he would cut drug costs a little. Perhaps if we give gun manufacturers enough money, they'll come up with some sort of 'super gun' that will eliminate crime. And the list goes on and on...

When are you fools that are going to vote for Bush going to wake up and realize that this is the single worst president this country's ever had, and that it's going to take long enough to un-fuck up 4 years of his dangerous retarded rule, much less 8.

What happens when you post at 6 AM...

Tivo is great, but every once in awhile I feel like it controls me and not the other way around. I think the secret is to keep it at around 1/2 full so that you don't feel pressured to watch stuff before it's deleted automatically.

I also enjoy Chocolate Cake.

My new favorite painting

This painting of how Marcia Brady would look as a Maori is entitled "Marcia Tamahine" and is by artist Isabel Samoras. It is part of the show 'Tiki Now' at San Francisco's Shooting Gallery. The show features other great artists like Shag and Bosko.

I'll talk more about it after actually seeing the show this Friday.

I'll Stop Screaming When You Acknowledge My Sensitivity!!

Just when I thought to myself that it had been weeks since really hating something, Mtv came to the rescue again last night.

During a commercial break during the only tolerable music videos that play on Mtv2, during the show 'Subterranean', a commercial came on for some band. I don't remember their name nor do I care to, but the gist of their music is 'a little bit of whining followed by a little bit of blood curtling screaming'. To help imagine it, think of Evanescense fucking Rammstein or maybe Marilyn Manson having a baby with Dashboard Confessional. Sound truly awful? You better believe it!

Well it turns out that this new little Damien of a sub-genre has a name, it's called 'Scream-O'. It combines the heartfelt college pussy awfulness of 'emo' with the nonsensical tourettes-inspired retard impersonations of what passes for hard rock today. It's as if scientists have been working 'round the clock to find a way to make music more awful, and let me just say, if there's a nobel prize for ruining society, these guys are a freaking lock!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to the lab where I'm working on fusing 'ska' with 'avant garde' and 'UK Garage'. I'm gonna call it 'UK Skavant Car Hold' and it's going to blow your fucking mind!

Apparently He Loved Dave Matthews...

I took BART into San Francisco today and it was FILLED with idiots going to the 'free' ($30) Dave Matthews Band concert in Golden Gate Park.

"How many shows have you seen?" asked everyone on board. All I could think was that if the train crashed, somewhere in my obituary it would read, "A train, filled with fans of the Dave Matthews band...". Then my parents, being completely confused, would bury me in a Dave Matthews T-shirt and hire a Dave Matthews cover band to play at my funeral. Sure, my friends would try to tell them that it was all a coincidence and that I hate the band with every fiber of my being, but history would remember me as just one of a thousand or so douchebags who couldn't get enough of Dave's unique brand of yodeling mediocrity.

Now I know how the few people who went to see Great White in Rhode Island as a joke must've felt as they saw the walls start to flame up.

Guest columnist Patton Oswalt

Ok, so Patton's not really writing for this site. In fact, I just stole this off of the Tenacious D message board. It's still pretty god dang-diddly fucking funny though. When asked why he didn't like Florida;

"Okay, Florida. Florida is a gigantic, mutant, pus-infected failure-cock hanging off the chin of America. Our National Birth Defect. It's filled, base-of-shaft to flaccid tip, with jocks trying to fight off gay panic by sheer, whites-of-the-eyes date rape. To the north you've got ass-bellied Orlando Disney tourists full of boredom for their spouses, contempt for their kids, and impacted fecal Doritos polyps. If Orlando bums you out, you can always travel south, where there's plenty of possum-fucking swamp rednecks who think the word "nigger" is a scientific phylum. The women are hot for fifteen minutes when they're seventeen, then quickly turn into leathery cunt-sows who can only come if you hit them in the pussy with a wrench. And let's not forget the sun-crazed faggots in Miami who live a Bizarro Universe version of Jock World, alternately acting like screaming queens and rough trade. Then there's the Cubans, who make up 90% of the population, commit 5% of the crime, and are blamed for the state going down the toilet. Is it any wonder God has sent three Class 5 hurricanes to try to hose the pubic lice off the crabby prick that is Florida? Anyone with enough sense not to shit their pants when they try to tie their shoes flees the state as soon as they can afford a bus ticket. The only reason John D. McDonald and Carl Hiassen came out of that state is because they had a karmic debt the size of Asia to pay off.

Good fish tacos, though.".

Blogs a Go-Go

Put down that Spin magazine! Throw away that New York Times! Stop listening to NPR! All the kids know that blogs are the only true news source left and the best place to find out about new music, comedy and all things cutting edge.

Here's the sites that everyone should be checking out:

Politics - Atrios, Kos, Jesus' General, and when you want to be infuriated by a republican, Mr. Blonde's Garage. But the best and funniest political site by far is World O' Crap.

Comedy - Even though a lot of his standup is reactionary garbage he learned from sucking off Nick DiPaolo and Colin Quinn, Jim Norton's 'I stink' blog is a pretty funny read. Also check out Something Awful and The Toon.

Music - Tiny Mix Tapes, Said the Gramophone, Stereogum, Large Hearted Boy

Weird Shit - Pho World, dedicated to vietnamese soup, This is Broken, which travels around NYC looking to take pictures of things that don't work anymore.

Now go out there and kill some time!

Rat Poop!

I just accidentally deleted an entire post. I'll try it again tomorrow. Crud.

No, That's Not Money On The Ground. You Still Have to Get A Job

I was at one of the Oakland A's-BoSox games the other day and was sitting near the bleachers. I turned to a friend of mine and said that the big flags that the super scary white trash in the front row were waving might as well of said, "I don't have a job".

Of course, as soon as I said this, it occurred to me, "Neither do you, asshole.". So in the interest of regaining the high ground and restoring my ability to make fun of others, I start an actual job today supervising inventory and shipping for an alarm company.

I'll continue to update this, of course, but the (HA !!) quality may suffer.

Well piss on me...

I recently wrote a letter to the webmaster over at Urinal.net saying it was a nice site that provided a valuable service. Included was a link to this here daily rag. Here's his response:

"Dear Mr. Lowder,

Thank you for your kind words about our site. I certainly wish I could say the same about yours. But I cannot.
-- Yours,
Joe U. Rinator"

I am of course, very sorry Mr. 'Rinator' that my sense of humor doesn't turn you on as much as pictures of where people go peepee. I suppose if I really wanted to impress you I could've devoted my site to 'pieces of doody that look like famous people' or something highbrow like that. I'll try to 'aim higher' in the future (delicious and oh so hilarious pun intended).

I aplogize for taking up some of your obviously valuable time, jackass.

Cheerleader Nation

I suppose it makes sense that George W Bush was a cheerleader at Yale. What else could explain how this country has completely eroded into a nation of pom-pom weilding pep squad members?

Most people these days couldn't give a rats ass about politics. They stumble through life, willfully ignorant, counting the days until the next season of The Bachelor comes out. To say most Americans lack critical thinking skills is kind of like saying that most Cows don't own a tuxedo. So obvious as to be pointless to bring up. Unfortunately for most people, being completely unaware of things around them flies right in the face of the other great American birthright, to talk endlessly about everything. So the average schmo is left to walk a tightrope throughout their life. "Must talk all the time so people notice me, but must not be too intelligent as to scare them away or be labeled a 'nerd'".

Luckily for people with more vocal chords than common sense, there is one thing that even the most ignorant, borderline mentally-disabled person can understand, sports. Now I'm not going to talk shit about sports. I love all kinds of sports. I participate in fantasy leagues, follow English soccer, Aussie Rules Football and the 4 major American sports with great enthusiasm. What I am going to talk about is the mindless cheerleaders of those sports. Not the women and men in particular who do it for a living, but the people of like mind who desperately want to scream about something but are too lazy to aquire the education necessary to feel that level of passion about something important. There's a few sports fans that can engage you in conversation for hours about what makes one team better than another, others can only occasionally shout 'Go Yankees!' or 'Giants suck!'. That isn't so bad because, at the end of the day, it's just sports. When people start behaving that way in matters concerning the future leadership of the country, however, it becomes slightly more intolerable.

And that brings me back to what's gone wrong with our political system. Talking to most people in 2004 about politics is like talking to most people about sports. They've picked a side, probably forgot the orginal reason why and can now only say 'Boo Kerry' or 'Boo Bush'. And much like in sports, some will bolster their comments with talking points from a loud, obnoxious radio host who exists only to fill his listener's head with talking points about why A is better than B. Unfortunately, this completely passive, myopic stream of information does two terrible things; It makes the listener think that they're educated and gives them a role model embodied in a radio voice that wins arguments by shouting over people or turning off their microphone.

So we're left with a system that breeds political activism the exact same way it breeds sports fans. Make 'em pick a side when they're young, never teach them any other way of thinking and (this is the important part) make sure they realize that anyone else who tries to convince them otherwise is an ENEMY and must be DEFEATED.

Bush Rules! Kerry Sucks! Woof woof woof woof!!!!!

Labor Day

The Daily Rag is celebrating the social and economic achievements of workers today. I'll be back tomorrow with the fruits of my labor.

Actually, I was too lazy to write the above statement and stole it from Tiny Mix Tapes, a good music blog.

Will Not One of Us Protect Us From the Paparazzi?

I really didn't need any proof that Mel Gibson is a complete and utter shitfuck nutball. Seeing his name plastered all over the new movie 'Paparazzi' certainly cemented the case, however.

The movie is about one of those poor movie stars who've traded some of their personal anonymity for millions of dollars and the fame they always claimed they wanted. But this celebrity is DIFFERENT. He decides to fight back! Take that minimum wage earning photographer! Maybe you'll think twice about hanging out at a club trying to take a picture of some vain douchebag so you can eat next week.

What kind of bubble do you have to live in to think that celebrities hassled by photographers constitutes a 'victims group' that needs a movie made about their plight?

I imagine Mel sitting in his office, flush with success documenting people beating the shit out of Jesus, thinking, "What noble, misunderstood, martyred group can I profile next?". And then it occurred to him, "Me.".

I don't want to drink, it's my job

I'm now the official 'bar and booze culture' critic at SFist.com. Go on over there every friday to hear me wax lyrically about my alcohol problem.

The column is entitled 'Staggering through Fog' and can be found by scrolling down to Friday's entries or in the Food section.

Smelly people leave, smelly people arrive...

As the patchouli scent wafts out of San Francisco for the week to go to Burning Man, it is immediately replaced by a new funk. Turning toward Fort Mason, my nostrils are filled with the scent of dateless desperation. That's right, the World championships of 'Magic, the Gathering' are in town.

A look at the constantly updated website reveals that, despite leading the world in dateless dorks, the United States is really bad at Magic the Gathering. I've never been prouder to be an American.

Special thanks to SFist for the 'heads up'.

Belated VMA review

I'm sure everybody who gets 'old' has the same thought at some point. "Am I turning into a bitter old crank who hates everything, or is everything just getting progressively worse?". Luckily, just when I start to think I'm turning into a sour old coot, MTV puts on the Video Music Awards and gives me a heaping helping of headache inducing sugary pop crap to make me realize that what is popular now is complete and utter garbage. Gone from the screens of Mtv are any attempt to be clever, any attempt at humor and certainly any attempt to be subversive or interesting in any way. What you're left with is a loud musical version of a political convention. Tell people exactly what they want to hear, trot out a few of the day's most popular 'musicians' and make it all so loud and choreographed that people won't have 2 seconds to think to themselves, "My god, this sucks".

Remember when the VMAs were the 'anti-Grammys'? When you could count on at least one thing to talk about at the water cooler the next day? When you felt like you really should watch because they might show something disgusting like Michael Jackson making out with Lisa Marie Presley? Well those days are as dead as Richie Valens. In fact, I would think that the Grammys will be hard pressed to put on a more industry-friendly 'suck your own cock' festival than this was. Mtv seems to have learned from the incident with the Rage Against the Machine guy crawling on their set a few years ago that encouraging any kind of 'rebellion' is not what the music industry is about, and it just cuts into Fred Durst's speaking time.

A good example of just how low Mtv has sunk is the 'Mtv2' award. Basically a public admission that the real VMA just goes to highest bidder, the coveted 'indie' status of the 2 award was once a possible reason to watch. If you sift through 3 hours of Usher and Chritina Aguilera telling each other how great they look, you could at least know that one award might go to someone who deserves it. Previous winners included videos by Spike Jonez, Michel Gondry etc. You know, people that aren't on complete and total autopilot (although I have to admit, that Usher video is incredible! Who came up with the idea to show him dancing on an expensively lit set? Really groundbreaking stuff).

Ok, so who's up for the semi-coveted Mtv2 award this year? Elephant Man (dumb rap video, but he's Jamaican or something so it's cutting edge), Franz Ferdinand (good song, dull video), Modest Mouse (decent song and video, but really overplayed at this point), Kanye West (What? He's also nominated for every other award!), The Yeah yeah yeahs (boring video, and I'm sick of the song), and finally, Yellowcard (a carbon copy of Good Charlotte, Simple Plan and a hundred other bands that I HATE. Not one unique or interesting thing could be said about them). And who wins? Why Yellowcard of course. What better way to show that this award is now up for sale to the highest bidder from the 'Avril Lavigne, look at me I'm a marketable punk' wing of the music industry?

So anyway, as for the rest of the show, it gave me a splitting headache. Nothing but bright flashing lights, vacant cheerleaders and talentless, christian mousekateers hoping to god that no one realizes how awful their existence is. Oh, and 'kudos' to the audience for booing the Kerry daughters, especially since I know that no one in attendance that night could talk about politics for more than 3 seconds before collapsing to the floor and sucking their thumb. I'm sure the prevailing attitude was, "I don't know which side they're on, but we'd better boo just in case. After all, we don't want to make it look like young people don't care about politics".

Proof if any was needed that nothing good EVER comes out of Florida...

No One But Yourself To Blame

Maybe I'm letting my pessimism get the best of me, but I think IT is starting to happen. By it, of course, I mean GW Bush is swinging into the lead and will be re-elected in November. A new Washington Post poll released yesterday shows an 18% swing from 8 down to 10 up for Bush in the question 'Who would make a better Commander in Chief?'. Everything that decent, intelligent people have been hoping wouldn't happen is happening. Everything intellectuals said wouldn't stick has stuck, and everyone we thought was too smart to fall for the used car sales pitch just drove off the lot.

So who's to blame for this clusterfuck? As liberal democrats sit around for the next four years, wondering how they managed to lose what should've been the largest ass-kicking since Mick Jagger said 'Why not get biker dudes to do security?', I'm sure the finger of blame will be pointed all over the place. That darned Karl Rove, dopes and christians in the south, and racists from the suburbs will all be singled out as those who were too stupid to see the horrible damage that four more years of this dolt will do to the country and the world.

Personally, I blame democrats. Not the new democrats, brought in by a call to get rid of Bush, but the middle-aged, chicken shit wing of the party. The people who ran Howard Dean out on a rail because they decided that it was more important to 'play not to lose' than it was to ride out a wave of new interest in their party. Everyone knows in football why the 'prevent defense' is also called the 'prevent a win defense'. The moment you give up the offensive and start hoping the clock winds down, you open a window for your opponent to walk right in. That's exactly what the democrats did when they decided that it would be better to go with a candidate that was closer to the middle, and therefore, had a better chance of winning.

A lot of people, democrats and republicans alike, don't even know what they believe in anymore. They just know that they want to win. For the last two nights, the republicans have had speakers representing their convention that believe in gay marriage and a woman's right to choose. They don't mind, however, because it will help bring in the swing voters. Same thing when some democrats talked about having John McCain as Kerry's running mate. What the fuck is the point in calling yourself a democrat or a republican if you'll hand the keys over to anyone who'll help you get elected, no matter what they actually believe?

You know who would've really helped Kerry as a running mate? Who would've brought lots of people over from the right and probably cemented victory in November? Jerry Falwell. This isn't some stupid game where the only prize is bragging rights for four years. You're actually supposed to represent something. But that's what America's been reduced to. We're a nation of ditzy cheerleaders and mindless jocks. All we know is score and stop, win and lose.

I know this will make me sound simple, but Howard Dean revived an interest in politics within me that had, over the last few years, turned into complete and total apathy. And I ask myself now, was it really so important and worth it to get him out of the race? Obviously, given what happened in Iowa, it could have been any minor flub on Dean's part and mainstream democrats would've overreacted and driven Dean out to the desert and dumped him out the back of a van in a burlap sack.

But ask yourself, assuming that Kerry's going to lose (I, of course, hope I'm wrong), wouldn't it have been a million times better to have someone that actually represents the left campaigning for the last 9 months? Would Dean have lost too? Probably. But he wouldn't have given the republicans the pleasure of thinking that they're protecting America and making a better future for the world. In fact, he probably would've had the effect of motivating the ultra-right to become much more involved. And once the ultra-right bible thumping wackos come into play, I like the democrats chances.

One thing's for sure, the day that Dean dropped out and Kerry took over the nomination, Karl Rove busted out the champagne and toasted victory in November. They knew that the only way Bush gets re-elected is if he runs against someone with 'Dukakis' like charisma. They got it. Once the Daschle wing of the democratic party seized control back, it was all over.

I'll keep my fingers crossed that I'll have to retract every word of this on November 3rd.