I like Bill Maher, but...

He and the rest of these "on the fence" people need to land on one side already.

In the case of Maher, I am so sick of his "rooting for the win" stance that it borders on insanity. The reality is that while winning is always good, it is counter productive to the environmental issues that Maher champions, and I think that he is too smart to not know that.

Which begs the question of whether he is full of shit when he talks about the environment. The reality is that a win in Iraq means that the U.S. has a fast track to oil in that country and a big ol' middle finger to the resto of the Middle East and OPEC.

You see, Michael Moore DID bring to light one thing that is wholly accurate in his film/rant on George W. and that was the issue of oil. Afghanistan's importance was always known and that is why we helped the mujihadeen in the late 70s and 80s fend off the Soviets. Yeah, it was a big win in the Cold War (and many would argue that it was THE win in the Cold War that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall), but it was a bigger win in the U.S.' quest to find another source of oil.

Many people forget that the 70s marked an era of soaring fuel prices in this country - the likes of which we only now have been reminded of. The Soviets more than likely had the same problem, and isn't it funny that they made an effort to go into Afghanistan and tired hard to push their influence in the Middle East as well? The Iraqi Air Force has MiG fighter jets, which aren't made in the U.S....

The troubles in the Middle East and our involvement in the said troubles ALWAYS have stemmed from oil. If I were more of a pessimist, I would argue that the only reason why Israel exists is to keep a country that is on our side in the mix of things over there - but I am not that pessimisitc.

Mr. Maher has made some very serious and well thought arguments in regard to the environment, and I think he is right about them. When he says that global warming is a national security issue, I am like "Right on, man!". But then, how could we support a war for more fossil fuels that only serve to help destroy our environment?

But Bill is the least of the people that should be chided for this... what about the whole Democratic party? Are they supposed to be more "eco-friendly" than the Republican dinosaurs in Washington? While I respect that they are the absolute minority in Congress, I know that guys like Malcom X and Martin Luther King. Jr. affected change and they were in a REAL minority fighting a tougher fight.

First off, why is John Edwards the only Democrat who can find his balls long enough to make a mea culpa? I feel like Howard Dean was made chairman of the party to help keep him quiet, as the Democrats have somehow managed to remain spineless on both the war and the environment.

So, Bill Maher, if you actually read my blog ever in the next couple of years (because we all know that the war will still be raging on then) do me a favor and understand that a war for oil can not work in concert with your pleas for the government to clean up the environment...

Genocide...

This morning as I watched the Today show in a quite hurried fashion, I happened to catch the following revellation:

There is a genocide going on in Dharfur...

Interesting.

Well I am here to tell you to be a little cynical of this. Crazy huh - being a cynic about something so serious. But let us all step back from the emotion for a second and understand ONE thing - there can't be good guys without bad guys. The United States has romanticized its role on the planet since the Manifest Destiny, and has continued to do so via men like Jackson, Sherman, Grant, Roosevelt (x2), Wilson, Eisenhower, Truman, Kennedy, and right on up through Colin Powell, and Stormin' Norman. When we did not have the hero in politics and war, we have had John Wayne play the part on television.

America loves the good guy.

So in order for us to play this part, we need a villian. We need a Slobodan Milosovic. We need a Hitler, a Hussein. Without these chumps, we would simply be another group of jerkoffs that think our country is the best - we have to PROVE we are the best.

In this light consider what is going on in Sudan. The information that has been disseminated about the conflict has been somewhat sparse, and in most cases as been presented as the "bad guys" going into villages and killing the men and raping the women...

...which is a sad story, and I have no doubt that it is happening. But, it is very akin to the story of Serbia, is it not? Oddly, that was ALSO sold to us as genocide, when in FACT it was not at all genocide.

Consider the definition of the word:

"The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group."

The problem in Serbia was that Milosovic was engaged in a WAR with Bosnia, and then a civil war of its own. By its very nature, one side is trying to eliminate the other in war - so the question begs to be raised, "Is war genocide?"

The answer is no.

Genocide is lacing blankets with small pox and giving them to freezing Native Americans in the Plains...

Genocide is taking people from their homes in Africa and making them work fields on another continent some 5 thousand miles away...

Genocide is taking people from their homes in the middle of the night and placing them in camps where they work to death and have their body parts used in household items...

What happened in Bosnia and Serbia was the result of a civil war. In all of this media bullshit, everyone somehow forgot that Yugoslavia is not even on the map anymore. It was no accident - and these wars were no accident either.

Why is it that no one said "genocide" when we did the EXACT same thing to the Vietnamese in the late sixties and early seventies? Is it not genocide to drop more bombs on Hanoi and North Vietnam than were dropped in ALL of World War Two by the United States?

My feeling is that there is a war going on in Sudan, and as a result the use of the word genocide is a bit of a stretch. I believe that the media wants us to be the good guy again, and based on their success in the former Yugoslavia, think that they can get another story in East Africa. I hope that they are wrong, because sacrificing American men and women for battles that need not be fought is FAR from heroic, and makes OUR government the villian...

What is Bill Cosby on?

http://www.waxy.org/archive/2006/03/03/litigati.shtml

The above link is what motivated this rant...

I grew up watching the Cosby show, and until recently I had never realized what the show was on a sociological level, and that Bill Cosby had an agenda.

Y'see, Bill has since gone on to buy the rights to shows like The Little Rascals and take them out of circulation as he views them as bad for Black America. In his view, characters like Stymie and Buckwheat are not what Black America should be subjected to, and that The Little Rascals was actually racist in its nature...

...let's forget that the show depicted young black AND white kids playing together with NO racial strife between them. The show ROUTINELY showed kids getting into trouble and doing things that kids simply do no matter what color they are, and the show NEVER played the race card with regard to the children.

Instead of focusing on that, we are going to focus on the historically accurate depiction of what Stymie and Buckwheat's parents did for a living - you know because in the roaring twenties, every Black in America was Joe Louis, or Duke Ellington, and they all lived in swinging Harlem. Cosby needs a reality check on that...

Which brings me to the Cosby Show itself. While entertaining, I think that many people missed the point that Cosby was driving at with the show:

Cosby's depiction of his television family represented his ideal of Blacks living like Whites...

Which is NOT a bad thing. Though, the reality is that not every Black is a doctor, and such a lifestyle for Blacks in America is not an easy goal to set.

I think that Bill forgets that he has a GED (he dropped out of High School), and that he eventually got an ATHLETIC scholarship to Temple University through serendipity and the Navy. Has Bill Cosby ever considered his life hinges on a lot of CHANCE? Has he considered that he lucked out, and that many Black families do not?

I agree with his view that only the Blacks in this country can do anything to help the situation, but for him to act like hundreds of years of discrimination have not played a role in the situation that many Blacks find themselves in America, is at best a view that is not sensitive to the realities of life for many people.

But I do not think that he is a Civil Rights Leader or anything along that line. I think that the lawsuit that I pointed to in the beginning shows Bill's true colors. Bill Cosby is simply about Bill Cosby. If you recall his career, Cosby was damn near an Uncle Tom until recently - which I am sure has nothing to do with his books and movies that he is writing.

No one sees the irony of him writing the Fat Albert script for the 2004 movie, and the fact that he has taken The Little Rascals off television? You know because it is better to show poor Black kids hanging around a junkyard with other poor black kids... thinking back to the little I saw of that AWFUL movie, I do not recall to many parts played by White folk - so what is Bill telling us?

Bill Cosby needs to go away and let America grow on its own. While Cosby has made some interesting points about race, I believe that they are self-serving at best and no one is listening one way or another. The fact that he would sue to have a parody of him removed from a website demonstrates what is important to Bill Cosby.

He will always be remembered as a brilliant actor, and perhaps he should consider that before his next PR stunt...

This week's assholes...

I figure that for the few, if any people out there that are going to read my musings, I should offer some continuity...

...each Wednesday, I am going to offer to you my listing of assholes for the week. Now I want to put out there what an asshole is, for those who may think that they know what an asshole is. An asshole is someone is more than capable of knowing better, and in many cases does know better, and regardless of this does something assinine. The guy making the right from the left lane is not always an asshole - though more often than not they are...

Anyway, let's get started with the assholes for this week...

Bode Miller - look, I have said this before and I will say it again, we all KNEW this guy was an asshole before the Olympics, but his parting words from Torino solidfied his spot in asshole lore.

You went to the Olympic games to "rock"? What the fuck? People spend their whole lives trying to make the Olympics, you actually make it, and your only goal is to "rock"? And people wonder why Americans are viewed as arrogant throughout the world...

George W. Bush - where to start? Gee, I don't know, how about saying that there is nothing wrong with the United Arab Emirates running our ports? Are we daring the terrorists with this one?

But that is not what makes him an asshole. The likelihood that Bush is getting something under the table for this shit is what makes him an asshole - you are willing to spy on every American's phone calls, and then you turn around and allow an Arab nation to run our ports? Yeah, REAL smart...

Michelle Kwan - who once more out did Miller as the biggest jerk off of this year's Winter Games. You can go back to my post earlier to find out why I think she is a schmuck, but to add insult to supposed injury, she is now going to be part of a skating tour that is going across America in the next month or so.

Recap, got a free pass to the Olympics at the cost of another QUALIFIED skater, pulled out because of an injury, and now is inked for a skating tour around the country...

Major Asshole.

Howard Stern - who this week has been slapped with a 1/2 billion dollar lawsuit by CBS who alledges that Stern breached their contract by hyping his move to Sirius Radio...

Stern's response is that CBS is trying to bully him. Yeah, that worked in 1985 when NBC was trying their hardest to stifle your creativity, and we all felt for you, then. This is different because as some one who actually listens to your show, I know that you spent the last year berating Clear Channel (whom I believe is CBS' radio affiliate) as trying to hold you down, and the same shit we have heard for twenty years.

The victim schtick is old - REAL old.

Howard, you are an asshole because you have failed to look beyond that schnoz of yours and see the bigger picture in this instance. It is not necessarily your job to care about CBS, and the fact that K-Rock SUCKS in NYC now, but is there any reason in the world why you needed to beat the shit out of them as you left? Did you REALLY need to advertise repeatedly that you were going to Sirius, which was free advertising for Sirius via the station that you were leaving?

What you did would be the equivalent of spending company time on writing a resume and interviewing, and then LEAVING and taking all of the said company's accounts with you. You are an asshole by virtue of the fact that you have no sense of humility. You won out when you inked that deal, and then you screwed CBS harder by advertising the competition.

You are wrong this time, but I am sure that the court will bail you out of this one, as 1/2 billion dollars is somewhat insane...

Anna Nicole Smith, et. al. - the son of the old coot that Smith married is a millionaire unto himself, and Smith is making money that I will never see in my lifetime. Watching these two fight it out is the most aggravating experience I have ever endured.

You two are BOTH assholes - split the money and shut the fuck up already...

Martha Stewart - I HATE "the Donald", but he is dead on with what he did, and he is spot on with being indignant about it. Martha Stewart should be counting every blessing in the world that she is even able to be on television and make money after what she did with her stock. Now, when asked about her show tanking, she blames someone else?

And I guess I should not be surprised based on her legal defense last year.

The reality is that Stewart is fucking boring - REALLY boring. Like the library teacher most everyone had in elementary school. The advertising for her daytime show manages to bore me in the 20 seconds it lasts - who on Earth would want to watch her on prime time television?

Martha, sometimes it is YOUR fault in life, you asshole...


And that about does it for this week. Thankfully, there is never a deficientcy of assholes on the planet, so I am sure I will have content for this next week...