Night of the Living trumps

Word came out today that trump plans to sell off NPR and PBS to the highest bidder. He also plans to slash funding to NASA. It's not clear if the descent into chaos will be sudden or gradual, but it seems clear at this point we're in for some cultural devolution to the magnitude we've never seen. I, for one, welcome our moron overlords.

So, from what once was an apartment, in what once was a city, in what once was a country, on what once was a planet, this is WGON signing off for the last time...

"Our responsibility here has ended."

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Powering Out of the Funk

Powering out of the funk for the first time in weeks for some reason this is happening at three a.m. but it's been so oppressive I'm not going to question it. I wanted to say getting a chance to study absurd plays like The Balcony by Jean Genet with Michael Quinn eventually gives one some balance and grounding to find one's feet when absurd things like what we've all just witnessed happen. In one semester I read Ionescu and Beckett and Genet and got a chance to spend hours discussing them with a man who knew his stuff. All these years later it helps me find my bearings at three a.m. and soon it will help me sleep the coma sleep of an existentialist who knows these things come, these things go.

Knowing that people have been dealing with the absurdity of the human condition and writing about it from the beginning helps one put crazy times and events in perspective. Waves of insanity come, they go. When they come it always feels at first as if this is the first time this has ever happened, but except for the first time it ever happened it never is. Take some comfort in reading how the Greeks, the French, the Romans, and every culture that ever existed dealt with it. Sometimes a sense of humor is essential. Sure, it's not funny that a lot of people are probably going to get hurt because of the miscalculation many have made in either voting for Donald Trump, or not encouraging others not to, but we'll get through it. We always have. Pin It

Trumpunzel, Trumpunzel, Climb Down Your Hair

The New York Times reports that President elect Donald Trump has been holed up in his Tower for days while outside protesters have to be held at bay by police and the Secret Service. 

Trumpunzel, Trumpunzel, Climb Down Your Hair

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Trump's Toup 2016!

Trump's Toup 2016! 

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Belphegor Is My Savior, I Follow None Other

Today's Supreme Court decision allowing Hobby Lobby to opt out of paying for its employees birth control on  the basis that it violates their religious convictions was a completely expected salvo in the war to transform America into an utter cesspool of religious freakdom.

Now, I think it's time for the rest of us to exercise our freedom of religion.  I've been putting off telling you all this, but I worship the ancient Moabite demon named Belphegor, and what Belphegor wants more than anything else is blood. Christian blood.  I really am powerless to refuse the wishes of my master, so I am afraid this is going to sting a little.  

In addition, I feel that this Supreme Court decision has given me the freedom to disregard this list of laws that were really harshing my ability to just sort of, let it all hang out and enjoy my religious freedom.

One of these is a hideous, smelly demon. The other is Belphegor.

1) Public Urination.  Seriously, I got to go.  A lot. In public places.  In front of family pets.  In front of your wife. Belphegor commands it. "Anything that makes it harder to pee is antislack." -Sternodox

2) Sacrificing pigs and goats, and on occasion a Christian child.  Ultimately Lee Greenwood.  Belphegor hates Lee Greenwood, and demands he must be sacrificed on pay per view in full view of a masturbating Dick Cheney.  I must obey. 

3) The need for speed. I have it.  And not in some jingoistic, homoerotic ninety minute as for carpet-bombing children in Third World nations sort of way.  I mean speed, the drug. All drugs, actually.  I must take all drugs.  God made them and He wants me to take them.  Opium, hash, goofballs, PCP, Bolivian marching powder, and worst of all the two legal drugs nicotine and alcohol.  Belphegor has stated categorically they are to remain legal and be used by all humanity for the purpose of attaining a holy accord with The Creator.  In his presence I am powerless to question his commands.

4) Fire. Fire. And more fire.  Huge public conflagrations around which we will all fuck, feast, and piss into without shame, fear, or retribution.  Because Belphegor is cool that way.

5) Respect women.  Not just your mamma.  Not just your wife, and your daughters.  Not just the women who agree with you politically or religiously.  All women.  All women everywhere.  Respect their right to exercise control over their own bodies.  They are not your property, your subject your fuck receptical, spank material or your subordinates. Belphegor declares that by his decree all women everywhere in God's kingdom are to be treated equally, with respect, and accorded all the rights and privileges heretofore afforded only to ignorant, entitled, bloated, self important, misogynistic honkeys, effective immediately.  So it has been spoken by the Horned One, so shall it be. 

So, there you have it. The Supreme Court decision allowing freedom of religion to one group has unwittingly opened up the flood gate for all of us to practice our own religion freely, too. Get out there Cthulians, Flying Spaghetti Monsterians, Church of the Subgeniusians, go forth and spread the word. Because if you really, really don't want to do something, you don't have to anymore. God said so. And the Supreme Court agrees. 

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Jesse Jackson Jr., A Virtual Zombie, Wins Re-Election By Landslide

Several months ago politician Jesse Jackson Jr. disappeared. No one knew where he was. He didn't show up for votes. Neither hide nor hair was seen of him on Capitol Hill.

Then news surfaced that Jackson Jr. had been admitted to The Mayo Clinic for treatment of exhaustion and depression. Something was making him tired, but it wasn't doing his job. What made Jesse Jackson Jr. so tired? Hard to speculate. I've always found maintaining a lie was one of the most emotionally and physically draining experiences one can go through. 

Ironically, it was about the time allegations surfaced that Jackson Jr. had misused campaign funds to decorate his house and buy a female friend a $40,000 Rolex. The politician from that point forward in no way fulfilled the obligations of the office he was elected to by citizens of Illinois' 2nd Congressional District.

None of this prevented the voters of the 2nd District from re-electing Jackson Jr. last Tuesday. Not only did they re-elect him, they did so by one of the most convincing landslides in any Congressional seat being contested. Seventy-two percent of the voters decided Jackson Jr. deserved another shot at Congress. 

And Jackson Jr. believed it himself, saying he was "humbled and moved" by the show of support. I would like to say the rest of us are shocked and appalled by the show of support, but no one expected any less, not here in Illinois. 

Jesse Jackson Jr. is probably going to prison for his mis-handling of campaign funds. Another black eye to the national perception of Illinois politics, which includes a virtually unbroken string of governors that have ended up in prison going back to the 1960's. What he won't be doing is losing any elections anytime soon, not in the 2nd Congressional District at least. Shame on you, voters of the Illinois' 2nd. You're every bit of what the public perception says. 

Jackson Jr. will not lose his pension it seems, valued at between 65,000-80,000 a year when he turns 62. Politics is a shady business. 

Jesse Jackson Jr. will soon be using a supposed diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder to avoid prison time.

Update November 12: After I had written this last night at 2 a.m. I realized all I had really done was recombine a few facts I had assembled from other news sources, but it occurred to me this afternoon a more interesting aspect of the story, as someone who has been diagnosed with both a mood and personality disorder, is if the Mayo Clinic actually has diagnosed Jesse Jackson Jr. with a mental illness. And as it turns out, they have. 

Sort of.

Jesse Jackson Jr. has been diagnosed not with Bipolar Disorder, as many headlines claim, but Bipolar 2, a new diagnosis introduced in the DSM in 1994. For a brief explanation of the difference please consult this article in Time Magazine's Health and Family section. Many psychologists believe the array of new personality and mood disorders, including Bipolar 2 and Borderline Personality disorder are bogus, and either created by the pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs or to categorize problem inmates of mental health facilities who otherwise have no discernible disorder. 

A more cynical view (not that believing that the pharmaceutical companies would conspire with a gullible mental health community to create fictitious disorders in order to sell expensive drugs in order to treat fictitious disorders isn't cynical enough) is that the mental health community is creating disorders simply to describe bad behavior. Instead of "the devil made me do it" we get Bipolar 2 made me do it. or Borderline Personality Disorder made me do it.

let's clear one thing up: I believe in mental disorders, but I'm not convinced that these particular ones are legitimate. When i sat in psychology classes in college the students there, the ones who were actually going to go out and treat the mentally ill in institutions, were still easily convinced Multiple Personality Disorder, which they later renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder after anyone who wanted to appear responsible would no longer take MPD seriously, was very real. It was not. And I have a hard time taking those people seriously now. 

Borderline Personality Disorder largely came about because those who were dealing directly with violent and abusive inmates in institutions needed some way to label a population that was misbehaving but otherwise had no diagnosable condition. BPD gave them a tool to label these people as mentally ill, which gave them more power in subduing them and segregating them from the rest of the population. In short these were people who the mental health professionals were sick of being abused by and asserted pressure to have them labeled something, anything, that would allow them to be singled out.

Does Jesse Jackson Jr. have a real mental illness other than Bipolar 2? I haven't a clue. But do i think Bipolar 2 is a sufficient explanation for his allegedly criminal behavior? Not really. I think he made poor choices and should be liable for the consequences of what he may or may not have done. 









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Mitt Romney: Once a Bully, Always a Bully

What does a bully look like? I don't know. Do you? The attack Mitt Romney participated in upon a gay student all those years ago bears haunting similarities to dozens of stories we see in the news each year. It calls to mind the type of intolerance and ignorance that led to the torture and murder of  Matthew Shepard. America is changing. Becoming a better and more tolerant place. Votes like the one taken in North Carolina this week to ban gay civil unions belies that fact, but it is a fact. Bullies are bullies, always have been. I suspect it's just something that is in one's heart and character, to see the weak, the vulnerable, and the different as less than human or less than deserving of the respect we expect to be shown to ourselves and those we care about. Someone with that type of character weakness is not qualified to be the President of all the people of America, and I think that's probably fine with Mitt Romney, who has no intention of being the President of ALL the people of America. Once a bully, always a bully. 

"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."

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2012/05/mitt-romney-bully.html#ixzz1ubSrIiLF


More webcomics

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Bribes In America Webcomic By David Pedersen

As the legality of President Obama's national health care act is debated in the Supreme Court, this webcomic arrives in the mail from my good friend David Pedersen. 

Bribes In America by David Pedersen

You can buy David's great book of poetry Love Is Meat <----- there 

More poetry, music, and webcomics by David Pedersen

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When Did Obama Go Wrong and Why Is Eastwood Right?

I'm just recalling Obama's first thirty days in office. He demanded Guantanamo Bay trials end immediately and the base be closed within one year, he signed a bill requiring equal pay for women, outlined a new energy policy, restored funding to women's health centers, outlined his plan to remove all troops from Iraq, and reached out for peace in the Middle East. And I started thinking the America that had become so frightened of bogeymen that it allowed Congress and the President to strip away its civil rights with the Patriot Act and a series of Presidential letters that allowed everything from tapping our phones to installing a kill switch on the internet was maybe starting to emerge from its shell and demand we return to the days of freedom and liberty. Then things started to change. Slowly at first. Obama fired the general in charge of operations in Afghanistan, then blocked the release of photographs showing torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Bush administration had allowed such photographs, even though they caused a great deal of embarrassment and backlash.Alright, I thought. Maybe he's got a point here. Why stir up hatred in countries where our troops have to deal with the consequences of such photos.

Yes to the Patriot Act and NDAA

But it slowly got worse and worse. There were some more promises kept, and some progressive legislation passed over the summer of 2009, including a climate change bill and benefits for partners of Federal workers. Then in July the overhaul of the Medicare and Medicaid systems began and nothing since has made a damn bit of sense. In October Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, which would later turn out to be quite ironic. The year ended with the Senate passing the health care reform bill.

After a couple of terrorist scares, including the shootings at Ft. Hood and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempts to set off a bomb on a flight bound for Detroit, Obama started to talk tough about terrorism. His demeanor on Gitmo and civil rights started to change. He extended President Bush's wire tap measures, backed off on his promise to close Guantanamo Bay, signed a four year extension of the Patriot Act on May 26, 2011, then on January 2, 2012, when he knew no one was looking, signed into law the most noxious legislation and legion of Congressional cowards any punks had ever dare send to an American president to sign... the NDAA.

The National Defense Authorization Act greatly expands the power and scope of the federal government to fight the War on Terror, including codifying into law the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without trial. Under the new law the US military has the power to carry out domestic anti-terrorism operations on US soil. In essence, the NDAA makes America a war zone where all civil rights guaranteed to American citizens by the Constitution can be summarily overturned by the government. 

So, how did this President, this President in particular, who campaigned on hope and equality and specifically ending the tyranny of the Bush administration  and Guantanamo Bay and torture end up signing a defense act that authorized powers of oppression and tyranny over its own citizens that would have gagged any previous president? What happened to Barack Obama? 

This isn't what I voted for. It's not something I want to vote for again. But what's the alternative? The Republican candidate? No thank you. Then I have all this and a moral war on everything from abortion to gay marriage to obscenity. One quote i saw that seemed to make a lot of sense to me came from Clint Eastwood. When asked about gay marriage he said  "I don't give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We're making a big deal out of things we shouldn't be making a deal out of ... Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want."

How about we all just leave each other the hell alone?

He went on to say "I was an Eisenhower Republican when I started out at 21, because he promised to get us out of the Korean War," Eastwood tells the magazine. "And over the years, I realized there was a Republican philosophy that I liked. And then they lost it. And libertarians had more of it. Because what I really believe is, let's spend a little more time leaving everybody alone." 

But no matter how one side seems to talk about equality and the other side talks about a smaller government. everybody seems to be getting comfortable with using the government to settle personal moral squabbles. I don't feel comfortable with that at all. I think I'd like to try Clint Eastwood's way and just stay the hell out of each other's business. 

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Mitt Romney In Rockford

Both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum came to my town today. Rockford, Illinois. I know they did because I saw the motorcaid whiz past my window on its way to a very safe location on the outskirts of town. I doubt either of the candidates got much of a look at Downtown Rockford, where I live. It has beautiful aspects and a lot of great people trying to make positive change, but it also has plenty of decay, blight, and legions of homeless, unemployed, and discouraged people hoping for change. But with Mitt Romney's statement that "he's not concerned about the very poor," I don't hold out much hope. 

Night of the Living Republicans

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Why Doesn't Anybody Want To Vote For a Republican Candidate?

Nobody seems to want to vote for any Republican candidate these days. And I'm not going to be political in this blog, I just want to do a history of the Republican party's search for a Presidential candidate to challenge Barack Obama in 2012, because as the Grateful Dead once sang, "What a long strange trip it's been." One thing is assured: SOMEONE will run as a Republican against Barack Obama in 2012, but given the amount of bizarre, almost surreal twists and turns the nominating process has taken, it could be anyone, including a candidate we haven't even considered yet. Here's a recap...


The first power couple we were told were going to blow Obama away were these two...

Before Obama's State of the Union address in 2009 it was already apparently decided. This was the new Republican power couple. Obama didn't have a chance. Jindal/Palin, Palin/Jindahl, didn't matter who was on top and who was on bottom, and Republicans couldn't wait for 2012. 

Then this happened...

Palin was reported to have snorted cocaine and banged NBA player Glen Rice. I have known women like that. They're called strippers. This probably isn't a real picture of Palin, but I like to think it is. Then this happened...

Jindahl's response to Obama's 2009 State of the Union address was a disaster. Jindahl Bombs. And Republicans started to realize what the rest of America already knew: you can't have two airheads on the same ticket. Who's going to run? Maybe this guy...

Maybe this guy. Ron Paul, despite being elected to to Congress 78 times was successful in convincing some people he was a political outsider. With seemingly minor gripes like auditing the Federal reserve, Paul became the rage amongst young hipsters and older whackadoos, who used their avalanche of comments on sites such as Yahoo to prove that Paul was the most popular candidate and was being systematically ignored by the media. But there was only one problem: once real votes started to be counted nobody in real life seemed to be voting for Ron Paul. Perhaps if we elected candidates by the volume of comments they recieve on social networking sites Paul would have had a chance. Hold on for a...

Bimbo change. Bring on the next tone deaf, marginalized, home schoolin', farm subsidy takin' harpy. Next. Will anyone ever emerge to take this nomination?

No, not the Mormon Fonz, Mitt Romney. Mittens announced his candidacy early on, was super well funded, and could afford to let others be tagged as the front runner for many months before his Romulan ship of big corporate money and pundit support uncloaked. Only one problem: nobody really seems very hot about voting for him, even in a primary. But they don't seem to have been given much of a choice. Even other major candidates couldn't raise the type of money required to campaign or even get on the ballot in all fifty states. Think about that. Even major candidates now can't afford to run in all fifty states. That leaves a very big opening for anyone who can raise that type of money to run pretty much unopposed in many cases. But it wasn't over at that point. Not by a longshot. Because...

Speaking of zombies, this guy seemed to return from the dead. And much like this entire farcical process, was taken as a joke at first. After ethics violations that led to him resigning as Speaker of the House Gingrich Busted most decent people probably would have scurried off and left the American public alone. Which Gingrich, by and large, did for over a decade, accepting exhorbatant sums of money from corporations for speaking engagements and book deals, all the time building up the base of money and support that would allow him to make one more run at major public office. There's no shame in his game, and his strident and fiery nature appealed to many Republicans. He surged back into the American political consciousness and won the South Carolina primary. Onlt one problem: even he couldn't raise enough money to get on the ballot in states like Virginia. How much money does one need to buy an election exactly? probably we don't want to know, but if Gingrich can't even get on the ballot, who can?

Hold on for a surprise contender who's about as surprising as the end of Titanic

Million dollar haircut, ten cent brain. Enough said. Except that he also was declared the front runner the first week of his candidacy.

Okay, that's a little bit of a low blow, so to speak, but I've got to use these 3am Photoshop creations somewhere. So, who have we got so far? Perry was now the front runner, even before he officially announced his candidacy. A new frontrunner. Can we at least vote on something before the press tells uis who's already won? Here comes the first vote, here comes Iowa...

What do you mean the candidates the press has been telling us are the front runners got almost no votes? What do you mean those millions and millions of Paul supporters didn't seem to show up at the polls (maybe they were abducted by aliens on their way to the ballot box), what do you mean some guy the media never even talked about before won? What is a Santorum? And what the hell is that black guy doing on the stage? I feel like I've been duped. The media told me this wasn't what was supposed to happen. When will this crazy ride stop? Goodbye...

Herman Cain. You remember Herman Cain, right? He made some pizzas, diddled some waitresses, and for about ten days was annointed by the media as the Republican front runner. Which group of voters were the pollsters continually able to contact to get these results that didn't seem to match reality when actual human beings voted? Kind of scary, isn't it? That the media is perfectly fine with the concept of electing a President the same way an American Idol is selected. So, wait a minute. I thought I knew who was going to win because the media told me. But none of those people got any votes. That doesn't seem right. And Newt Gingrich isn't dead, and somebody named Santorum is now in the lead, and Ron Paul has been debunked and who else is there?....

Hello, ladies. Remember me? I've been in second place the whole time. With more corporate money than, well, than those poor schlubs chasing me. Nobody really wants to vote for me, but, haha, they really don't have a choice, now do they? New Hampshire, South Carolina, Ohio, Super Tuesday? Whatever, guys, you'll run out of money sooner or later. Bring on...

Barack Obama For President 2012

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