Reflecting on 9/11, nine years, later was damn depressing—almost as bad as reading our submissions this week.  Did you really think a bunch of radical yahoos could defeat America (and I don’t mean the Discord staff)?  Of course not, they were betting on our own stupidity, and that bet paid off far beyond their wildest expectations.

Al Qaeda can officially declare victory in the War on Terror.  In a six to five ruling last week, the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals sealed our fate.  This ruling will forever protect George Bush, or any future president for that matter, from even being subject to a judicial review.  Another Watergate may never happen, well, the president is less likely to be brought to justice at any rate.  The ruling said that claims of torture will not even be investigated, as they are deemed “state secrets” not subject to court room adjudication.

Since 9/11, Americans have systematically dismantled their own freedom by granting unprecedented powers to the executive branch, the FBI, and the CIA, powers that have been used to surveil the citizenry without probable cause or due process, torture prisoners in illegally run overseas secret prisons, and also to wage unfettered, unjustified war on a global scale.  Cheney said that Obama would one day thank him for the expansion of power.   As a citizen of our once great nation, I would like to take the time to say, “Fuck you, Mr. Cheney.”

Freedom of religion and equal treatment under law have been revoked, as Americans are too scared to allow the construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan, and have declared the Muslim religion evil due to the actions of a radical minority who hate us for political reasons, not religious ones. I mean really, as if Al Quaeda would be stupid enough to put their terrorist headquarters in downtown Manhattan. Um, Hello? They operate out of Pakistan (assuming Osama hasn’t moved on). You remember? Our ally in the war on terror? The ones sucking down billions in aid which is being funneled into the Afghani insurgency? But I digress…

The mainstream media, well, OK, Fox News is very successfully fostering hatred, prejudice and fear, and building Nazi-esque nationalism by, ironically, repeatedly comparing our democratically elected government to Nazi Germany.  Joseph Goebbels would be proud. Meanwhile, the Koch brothers, Texas gazillionaires, are secretly funding the Tea Party, because they’re such big Glenn beck fans.  (Hah!  Fools.) How ironic that the second largest stockholder in Fox News’ parent company, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into the very Manhattan mosque project they so fear. Am I the only one that sees the hypocrisy here? This guy is providing both the fire and the gasoline (literally) causing us to fear them and them to hate us. Why don’t we solve the whole problem by rounding up all of the Muslims and putting them into concentration camps, um, I mean resort colonies; a “final solution” if you will. Where have you heard that before?

The American economy is flying apart. Joblessness is near an 80 year high, and bankruptcies, crime rates and homelessness are following suit.  For a more hard hitting example, I am about to lay off Zano for a third time.  He is single handedly increasing both our unemployment numbers as well our nation’s under employment numbers.

Americans no longer travel because they are too scared, too poor, or do not want to deal with the hassles of air travel security restrictions or exploding underpants.

Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, somewhere (Pakistan?!?!?), orchestrating terrorist activity all over the world. He moves around, at will, sowing the seeds of anti-American sentiment, and we are watering those seeds by protesting at Mosques, burning copies of the Koran, and garroting cab drivers.

The other day, Andrew Sullivan was actually channeling Zano, instead of the other way around:

There are legitimate trade-offs between national security and liberty. But the protection of war criminals where no secrets are at stake except the scandal of torture itself is not one of them. Alas, there are few such citizens around. And, most tragic of all, those who say they care about liberty above all – the tea-partiers who invoke the founders – seem only too willing to surrender every liberty for the prize of a security against a threat we cannot even measure, and to bow down before a new king (and probably warrior-queen) rather than elect a new president.

—Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, September 9, 2010

We need to change Know Hope to No Hope, but not for the reasons the wing nuts out there think. I would like to end this post on a high note…this is all going to end December 21, 2012, and I will be laying off Zano again this week.

Winslow usually won’t post a rebuttal of a rebuttal, but I know what he drinks.  OK, Crank, why can’t Rep. Boehner and Speaker Pelosi both be bad for America?  I would like to see the Dems lose the house just to see Nancy Pelosi sit the hell down.  She is one of the singularly most ridiculous figures in politics today.  And, in 2010, that’s an astounding refudiation.  Anyone who says “the best way to create jobs is to extend unemployment benefits” needs to turn in her gavel by the end of the work day.  You must do it during business hours, of course, because it won’t slide under the door.  But getting Boehner (OH) to replace Pelosi as the next Speaker of the House is kind of like replacing Edith Bunker with Reverend Jim from Taxi (am I showing my age?).Whereas I never support stupidity on either side of the aisle, you steadfastly support your local moron.

You made a statement on the mosque issue when I disagreed with the majority of Americans.

You said, “Don’t you know how ridiculous that sounds?”

The whole point of the article was how the majority can be wrong, not just most of the time, but all of the time. Misinformation was used effectively in Nazi Germany too.

I can hear Goering now, “The majority of Germans support the construction of concentration camps, yet you oppose them?  Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?”

But who needs 1930s Germany? Look no further than the people who chose VHS over Beta, IBM over Mac, and Jordin Sparks over Sanjaya.  Heck, we even chose Bush over ‘anyone with a pulse’ in ‘04.  Oh, that’s right Kerry…er, never mind.  The majority of people, when subjected to a wide array of misinformation (otherwise known as Fox News), can get it wrong every time.  After a few more Tea Party rallies the majority of Americans will believe Obama’s a Muslim, he was born in Kenya, and Sanjaya will probably end up on a celebrity no fly list (CNFL).

I still believe, Sanjaya!

Your only argument that comes anywhere near the mark is my position on the mosque debate.  I certainly sound like “the anointed one” on this score.  But here’s the thing, we must pick and choose our battles wisely.  Defending the Constitution against Sharia Law is a MUST. Solidarity with Danish cartoonists to defend our 1^st Amendment rights is worth any backlash.  On the shadow side—brought to you by those fighting Foxeteers—we’ve got Christian fundamentalists burning the Koran, and the terminally misinformed protesting a mosque (a trumped-up story created to score nothing more than political points).  It’s not just wrong, it’s dangerous.  Being fodder for Al-Jazeera, stoking hatred unnecessarily, and increasing suicide bomber lines for bull shit is a good way to further damage the freedom and security you supposedly hold so dear. 

What the right’s demagoguery on the Cordoba mosque really represents is a lack of seriousness in the war on terror. They are playing right into the Jihadists’ hands.

—Andrew Sullivan The Daily Dish Aug 14, 2010

Currently, Fox News is the 24/7 mosque debate channel.  They invented it, they spun it, and now they are scoring political points with the unwary.  And, as for yours truly being Mr. Spock, exploiting anxiety and negative emotion is not the ideal way to live long and fatwa.

As for your stirring piece on, yours truly, “taking the opposite position of the vast majority of Americans” …well, even when I didn’t get most things right, I always wanted an aristocracy of some sort.  An aristocracy doesn’t have to be a bad word.  To some degree, you always hire someone you think will do the best job and let them get to it, or, in Obama’s case, go golfing.  Putting everything to a vote is great way to get things wrong.  Why is this, you ask?  American citizens may be great at whatever they do, but are they the best to decide every foreign, domestic, and economic decision we make?

OK, by a show of hands, should we emphasize international environments to allow domestic development as the Soviet Union remains concentrated on other emergent situations, which could allow China to stabilize East Asia for the predictable future?

Good luck with that.  Another shining example of Hannity’s America.  At least the wise have a firm grasp on how much they don’t know.

The only truth is in knowing that you know nothing

– Bill S. Preston, Esq., quoting some textbook, requoting Socrates

Besides, popularity contests get Palins in office. Do you know who my High School student class president was?  What an asshole! OK, not really, but I had a cool high school, but most of em’…wow! At the end of the day, if we put everything to a vote, Rupert Murdoch is now president.  Good luck with that too.

As an integralist, I differ from traditionally liberal views quite often.  So I ask again, do you have any position where you stray an iota from the Fox playbook?  And you still don’t think this is a coincidence?  Especially taking into consideration their track record in recent years?  80% of Fox’s listening audience believes all of their bullshit.  This is the problem.  It’s that Pavlov’s blogs thing again…

Oh, and I did offer a solution about Fox News (See: John Cusack).  Kidding.  After his statement about Fox this week, I’m glad I got his doppelganger interrogated by the Riverhead Police Dept a few years back (long story, but damn funny).  The 1^st Amendment demands we leave Fox alone.  Just move it to Comedy Central where it belongs.  So ultimately, Crankko it’s not stupidity, it’s misinformation.

Of course, “Stop blaming Bush for the economy” is the Fox mantra.  Sure.  But here’s some simple non-Foxinian mathematics: after the 1929 collapse, what did the economy look like in 1931?  It took 4 years before the beginnings of an inkling of a recovery started.  The stock market followed the same pattern in 2008 as in 1929 and only stopped, just shy of the very bottom, after TARP and the spendulus arrived on the scene.

No one on either side of the aisle was going to let this country slip into the abyss without at least trying Operation Monopoly $$$.  Bush started it, Obama continued it, and unless a truly independent party was involved, which it wasn’t, this was all inevitable.  Besides, if all of our car companies tanked at the same time (The Crank Plan) then who would make our tanks? And, of course, the Chinese, during a ground war in Asia, would be happy to sell us spare parts for our Hummers, right? They own that now, remember? Aren’t Republicans into security anymore?  Sure they are, they’re just not good at the whole connecting the dots thing.  But a depression would do wonders for our security, right?  Maybe Bin Laden would feel so sorry of us, that he’ll pull that Mission Accomplished banner down from his cave mouth.

If Republicans had won in 2008, they would have done the same thing, but they would still be saying “deficits don’t matter,” so you wouldn’t be worrying as much about pesky things like “reality.”   Well, at least not until the next Dem arrived in office.  “Holy shit!  Look at these deficits!” Give me a break.

Then I get this graph from the Crank via email.  It states the stimulus cost more than all 8 years of the Iraq war.

First, I wasn’t for the stimulus (certainly not to this extent).  Second, the majority of economists agree the stimulus averted a depression.  Third, the Iraq war was a huge chunk of cash, the combined cost of which is only slightly under the stimulus, and why did we go there again?  What did it accomplish?  Oh, yeah, it helped Iran, and Al Qaeda.  That’s good right? They’re our allies, right?

The Bush tax cuts rocketed our deficits more than any other single item.  Add to it one extraneous war and the housing collapse (which Bush may not have caused, but certainly presided over) and, well, my boy Fareed said it best:

The simple fact is this: all the Bush tax cuts were unaffordable. They were an irresponsible act of hubris enacted during an economic boom. Conservatives thought they would force us to shrink the government. But with Republicans controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, did reduced taxes cause reduced spending? No, they led to ever-increasing borrowing and a ballooning deficit.

—Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, Aug 1, 2010

The Fox Business Channel has never mentioned this simple, yet stunning fact, and they never will. And you say I have no solutions?  Your solution is to vote in a guy, twice, who tanked us, and then demand a depression.

“Sorry, but I believe my poor voting record indicates that I should receive a depression with my Happy Meal and, well, I’m kind of stuck in this jobless recession, so I was kind of wondering if I could downgrade?”
The stimulus was a reaction to a cluster fuck—granted, it went overboard—but it was a response, not a cause.  The Iraq war was part of the cause—part of why the spendulus was spawned!  It’s like bitching about the nuke that diverted the planet killing asteroid because all the radioactivity now in the stratosphere.

Then, for the cherry on the sundae, you said, “Obama IS the worst president ever.”  Where did you hear that, I wonder?  Hmmm.  First off, Obama’s currently ranked somewhere in the middle, but who’s counting. Fox is never having to check your numbers.  Besides, if Obama continues to slide he’s likely to be a one-term president.  Sorry, but voting in the worst of the worst for two terms and not learning anything from one’s mistakes is more of a Republican thing.

Dear dear Mikkie, First I wish to thank you and your family for a wonderful weekend. I especially enjoy the blue lips I now have from the fucking Martianic oxygen levels you  billy goats have ‘up mountain.’ “Hey Crank, what are the perfect things  for a fat, old, oxygen starved gorilla with two knee replacements to do?  I know, let’s walk a lot, eat a lot, and climb some stairs too!  Just because I usually win the argument is no reason to try to finish me off.

Your latest drivel is a milestone in all things drivel; it’s uber drivel. Fast acting uber drivel, which also sounds like something I saw on an infomercial once.  All your—uh, ummm—work, so to speak, was at least fast at getting my pump going enough to redden my lips again. Our conversation over overpriced wine and microscopic desserts was mind numbing. I am amazed you have the guts (not balls, your sister’s got balls) to print it!

Ben Quayle is correct-Obama IS the worst President in history. Not because all he has done is not correct the Bush Abominations. That’s your story.

Here is a list of fuck ups:

1. Appointing know nothing idiots to posts they know nothing about, and have no real experience in. 30 of them. In a row. All failures. Some down right dangerous. A first ASSistant that manages to infuriate more people on his own side than even I do. A Science Czar that thinks Star Trek is real (Live Long and Prozac). An economic Czarina that looks WAY too much like Fred Flintstone and is ironically sending us back to the Stone Age. A Car Czar that didn’t ever hold a real job (right out of school—a real Zano special). A Czar in charge of education who wants children in K thru 8 to be taught the wonders of homosexuality. It is the parents job to permanently fuck up their children’s outlook on sex, like your Grand mother did with me (twitch-twitch-blink-blink).
2. Treating Healthcare Reform more importantly than the current “Bush inspired” economic crisis. And then, fucking THAT up. So much so, it WILL be repealed at most, or left with no funding at the very least.
3. Taking the current crisis at the border as if it were just another political football. Uh, Mik, do you think that the fact that there is “a dry-sandy space” between Mexico and the US will deter the drug cartels from moving north? It will not. It is already happening, but you wouldn’t know it, living in the “rarified air” as you do. Oh yeah, I see them walking up to the border now, and being bounced off the ‘Mikko Force Field’, shaking their heads and returning to Mexico. Stop drinking while watching Star Wars re-runs, you are getting reality confused with fiction.
4. Having the same disease as you do, that is thinking that “if the majority of Americans do not think exactly as I, they must all be wrong, and are too ignorant to see so.” Hey you bearded human beer sponge, do you even realize how ridiculous that sounds? Probably not.
5. Watching the economies of Europe fold up like a Yugo in a wreck with a moose, all the while espousing their economies as the ‘way to go’. Weez aint blind Mikkie, weez jus’ stupid.
6. Taking the exact opposite stance to the vast majority of Americans on EVERY important subject. See items 3 & 4.
7. Because of all the above, American corporations are now sitting on three trillion dollars in their pockets, and not spending a dime, grinding any real recovery into the ground just like you did with your last three poorly maintained cars. Why? People now see the real costs of Crap & Trade, Obamacare, Repeal of the Tax Cuts, new Taxes and fees, the general cost of the interest on trillions of dineros in deficits and the general imbecile-like fascination with unions, as maybe a bad thing? His whole agenda is jobs killing. Just reviewing this shit, Winslow fired two more contributors and three more editors.

In closing Mikko, all the world is not Bush’s fault—a large portion, yes, but all, no. Realize the potential of another fuck up before it’stoo late.

Crank This.

Washington, DC—The committee of the Ms. Cretin USA pageant has announced three finalists for the coveted title of most obnoxious moron in America to…

• Sarah Palin – Ms. Cretin Alaska
• Jan Brewer – Ms. Cretin Arizona
• Sharron Angle – Ms. Cretin Nevada.

Palin, The Bard of Wasilla, was considered a shoe-in (Palinism) for the title as recently as one month ago, but recent public statements by Brewer and Angle have narrowed the gap.

Palin’s invention of the word “refudiate” was thought to be the nail in the cake (Palinism) for the former Governor’s presumed victory, but Angle’s “second amendment solution” to the problem of democratically-elected officials not in God’s favor was an astounding move.  Perhaps out of a combination of desperation and dementia, Brewer referred to most illegal aliens as drug mules.  These events, whether intentional or not, have turned this snoozer of a pageant into a sprint to the finish.

Palin has fought back via the talent competition by asserting her bilingus (Palinism) abilities, and using the term “cajones” in a sentence.  Brewer fell behind with her measured, careful response to Judge Bolton’s ruling on SB1070, but recovered quickly by addressing further comments to the honorable, Michael Bolton (yeah, yeah, we know).

Each candidate was asked to submit a 500 word essay outlining their plans for reviving the U.S. economy.  Angle’s entry consisted of a barrage of loud bangs, a muzzle flash, and a plagiarized copy of Leviticus.

Brewer’s essay titled, Degrade Demean Deport – The Final Solution veered widely off topic but increased her lead in Arizona’s gubernatorial primary by five points. Palin has asked for an extension to accomjugate (Palinism) Lynn Vincent’s busy schedule.

The final and deciding competition of the pageant will consist of a “lightning round” of ten questions from Fox News contributor and disgraced former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.

Mr. Gingrich is expected to query Palin on such topics as…

• Appropriate situations to use the words retarded, darkie, and towel-head.
• Special circumstances where a birth certificate does not constitute proof of citizenship (Palin feels our 49^th state = rock on, but our 50^th state = radicalized Polynesians).
• The best assault rifle to use for combating the infestation of baby harp seals in the great white north. 

Brewer will face tough questioning on her proposed Arizona SB1071 which provides funding for Botox treatments to state office holders above the rank of lieutenant governor.

Gingrich is also planning a question to gauge Ms. Brewer’s moral compass by asking her to explain why it is categorically imperative to divorce a spouse once a serious illness, such as cancer or multiple sclerosis, has been diagnosed.

Ms. Angle will submit, to Gingrich, a list of questions that she is willing to answer.

“It’s absolutely necessary,” says Angle, “Newt is no friend now that he has joined the hated left-wing media.  Without my guidance, (and the Lord’s) he may forget to give me the opportunity to say, ‘send those $25 dollar donations to sharonangle.com.’”

Should Mr. Gingrich be tempted to deviate from the pre-ordained list of questions, Angle emphatically states that Newt will experience a “lightning round” of his own, blasphemer.