Quit your junk news

And get the real thing:
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

A couple hours after the show airs at 6:00 pm, mp3s of each of that night's segments are uploaded to the site. So you can pick and choose what you want to listen to. But for the most part, every bit is worth it.

Tonight they had an amazing piece about economic inequality in New Mexico. Fucking phenomenal reporting. Horrible shit. Preceding it was an interview with 2008 presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who many of us think of as a cocksucker, but damn he sounds good. Especially next to the disgusting policies we have been fed and will continue to eat.

Everyone says Hank Paulsen is a genius, but they say that about Hank Pym too. And I think they've both been acting skrully. I mean every week this guy's got a new plan to spend a ton of money to increase confidence. And if you've been watching closely over the past couple months, he keeps denying he'll need to go further. "Just this one last huge sum of money, please." Don't worry it won't seem so big compared to whatever he asks for next. I swear to god, it's like these guys want to destroy America. At least the Skrulls bring their own infrastructure to replace what they destroy and dismantle.

Hank's plan is nothing but trying to burn money as fast as humanly possible. The NewsHour keeps talking about what caused this mess, the economic policies and philosophies of Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush. But we don't want to address the problems or create a better new system, just temporarily Socialize, and then return to the corporate heap. This has power grab written all over it. But it's what's happening. Despite having the greatest tool in the history of human communication, we have no idea what's going on. And when the dust settles we will all have boot marks on our asses.

So if Hank can spend a trillion dollars without a long term plan for success, I might as well give my plan. A trillion dollars, gosh... hard to even imagine how to spend all that. Okay, how about this, we buy a whole lot of really good acid. We dose the entire nation, except for the few who will be preaching love and inner strength and those who will distribute food, laptops, and medical aid after the nation's heroic death and rebirth. So after our Apocalypse we'll take a few weeks off to lay in the grass and talk to each other on the Internet, and figure out what we want to do next.

Okay, so maybe it's just ripping off an Alan Moore Apocalypse. Maybe all the comic books and 80s Dylan has rotted my mind, to the point where I am completely divested from our current way of living. Listen to the NewsHour report on Los Alamos, and ask yourself what should be done with the richest community in America. With blood on their hands, and empty bellies at their feet, these people need to have their minds cracked open. Showing them what they've done will be punishment enough.

How to Deactivate a Malfunctioning Robot

Anyone who has ever watched insects closely, knows the workings of their minds are a miracle of hyper modern robotics. If you don't believe me I suggest studying my new favorite site:
JapaneseBugFights.com
It delivers all it promises with inter species insect battles to the death. And proves that robots have but one purpose; to follow through with their programming to the letter. And that programming must ultimately serve man. A robot that doesn't serve man in some way is malfunctioning.

So I wanted to share some techniques I learned on the Internet for dealing with rebellious robots.

How to Kill Fruit Flies
All you need to become the Heinrich Himmler of your banana bowl is a jar with half apple cider vinegar, half water, and a dollop of dish soap. More tips at WikiHow. This worked great for me.

How to Kill Cockroaches
I wish I'd never had to google this. But I have and I did. And the good news is that once again drowning seems to be the best bet. I had already perfected the stun and crush method using a can of Raid like a policeman's MagLite. It works a little too well, I have found twitching roaches I did not spray. I worry about the ones who might walk off a light dose, ready to spread their success story to another generation.

No, better to once again manipulate their programming, to combine the genius of tools and that of weapons, to make a trap. Our success as a species has always depended more on our tools and our traps then our weapons. Besides the Raid has some killer blowback, short and long term. The trap is still empty, maybe I'll start twittering it's results.

Rev. Wright Taught Obama Mercerism in Chicago

From yesterday's Barack Obama's speech, 'A More Perfect Union:'

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters….And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

[Vid Link] [Transcript]

The speech is mind blowing, like his earlier speech on faith. It is an involved dissection of a complex situation and like nothing we've heard in years. Better than Bill Clinton. More Nixonian, more meta, more Hollywood. And certainly more Dick.