I Can Be Wrong - It's Happened (But It Doesn't Happen Often Enough To Matter)

Out: claims the elections are rigged are conspiracy theories. In: TIME magazine article about why rigging the election was a good thing

Take It Any Way You Want (Just Take It)

I Heard The News Today, Oh Boy,....

This morning I woke up (first mistake) turned on the T.V. (second mistake) left it on the channel showing The Chris Matthews Show (third mistake) kept watching - even after it was clear he was only talking to a bunch of hacks from The Washington Post, The New York Times, and TIME Magazine (forth mistake) before (fifth mistake) I got frustrated. 

 Then, a light went on in my head, so I mixed a strong drink, drank it, switched the television off, got back in bed, and happily went right to sleep.

Conclusion: 

I'm really in trouble now,...

The Escape From Cult World Won't Be Easy,...

...starting with the fact almost everybody's lost:

Like all too many Americans TIME Magazine proves that it doesn’t know what is worth celebrating, noting, or memorializing in this world. Time doesn’t know what “important” means, it doesn’t know what “influential” means, it doesn’t even know what “top” means. And it has proven this again with its latest “2011 TIME 100 most influential people in the world.”

We've got to get our bearings - those of us who've still got our balls - and that means not allowing ourselves to be distracted by zombies and evildoers. I told you TIME was gone long ago.

Let the others fret about 'em. Forget 'em. It's time for us to move. The way out is clear, and we're not waiting for the "slow" ones, so gather your things and let's go home:

America awaits.

You Just Can't Count On The Smart To Be Smart

Not too long ago we did a Tweet about Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, that said:

Mark Zuckerberg says he's giving 1/2 of his money to charity because, I guess, he can't find anyone poor.

Now, finally, we've found someone who actually agrees with our perspective - how often is that? - while also having some other ideas we can agree with about how Mark's money could be even better spent:

Just in time for Christmas (or maybe Chanukah) another billionaire has pledged to leave half his fortune to charity. Not that Facebook CEO and Time magazine's "Man of the Year" Mark Zuckerberg needed any arm-twisting. He was -- he texts -- happy to spread half the wealth. It's right there on his Facebook page.

At only 25, Zuckerberg is already worth about $7 billion, give or take a few million. It used to take guys like Andrew Carnegie or George Hearst a lifetime to amass that kind of fortune. The Carnegies first had to sell the chickens and borrow £20 from relatives to immigrate to America. In Pittsburgh, young Andy worked his way up from bobbin boy. Zuckerberg, by contrast, was a spoiled computer prodigy from the get-go, always with the best tutors and teachers. No stoking boilers in a textile factory twelve hours a day, six days a week for this Harvard grad.

What gets missed in these self-serving headlines is the remarkable generosity of not-so-wealthy Americans. Americans who earn less than $20,000 a year give twice as much of their income to charity as those making $100,000. If you earn less than $25,000 you probably give 4.2 percent of your income to charity. That's a big deal even though Zuckerberg probably tips his doorman more than that. My not very subtle way of saying that for most of us, our 4.2 percent hurts a LOT more than Zuckerberg's 50 percent, which doesn't hurt at all.

IT IS BELIEVED the United States has 170 billionaires. So far 60 have taken the Giving Pledge, which is what you sign on to when Bill Gates or Warren Buffett calls you up during dinner and shames you into giving away half your fortune, preferably before your soup gets cold. And it won't do any good to get an unlisted number. Bill Gates has your unlisted number -- unless you make under $25,000 a year or own a Mac, which is pretty much the same thing.

What did billionaires do with their money before Bill Gates packed his bags for his little guilt trip? Well, it seems 19th and 20th century billionaires also gave away their fortunes. Yes, even the Captains of Industry -- dubbed "robber barons" by the pro-slavery, proto-fascist and "insipid muddlehead" (Nietzsche's phrase) Thomas Carlyle -- were civic-minded and generous. Carnegie put charity at the heart of his Gospel of Wealth, warning that "the man who dies rich dies disgraced." Meanwhile, old skinflint John D. Rockefeller confessed: "I never would have been able to tithe the first million dollars I ever made if I had not tithed my first salary, which was $1.50 per week." These men didn't believe it was enough to be incredibly successful or to create millions of jobs, or figure out new, innovative ways to make everyone's life better.

In fact, Carnegie went into poor, underserved areas and established schools in places where the government proved -- not surprisingly -- incapable. Carnegie was a meritocrat who wanted to give hardworking Americans "ladders within reach upon which the aspiring can rise." Zuckerberg has done likewise in Newark, New Jersey, only he's giving $100 million to failing public schools so they can continue to fail students for another decade and turn out another generation of doomed illiterates (by which I mean the incompetent teachers and administrators). Sort of the educational equivalent of propping up corrupt third world dictators with U.S. foreign aid.

The "robber barons" also established free libraries and art museums because they wanted to bring culture to the plain people, mostly because every time they holidayed in Europe they had to listen to some boring Brit lecture them about how uncivilized Americans were. Today their money is being used to fund exhibitions of shock-the-bourgeoisie art, because board members of these charitable foundations get a kick out that. Makes them feel superior. If that's not exactly what John D. had in mind, tough titty. He's dead.

Personally, if I had $7 billion I would use it a bit more constructively. I would buy MSNBC and fire Keith Olbermann. Then I would order the station manager to play nothing but Green Acres reruns. I would take the other $6 billion and place a $6 billion bounty on Osama bin Laden's head. And none of this dead or alive stuff. I want him Bonnie and Clyde dead. Eventually, one of his inner circle will succumb to the temptation and push Osama and his donkey (also named Osama) off the side of a cliff.

There you go. That was written by Christopher Orlet, and if he had only mentioned this blog it would've been perfect, though (we have to admit) the mentioning of Green Acres would've forced us to praise him, no matter what.

Some Nice Words To Wake Up To In January

"Joan Walsh of Salon and Joe Klein of Time debate the Democrats' troubles."

You, too, can start your day out right by listening to these much-admired crackpots here (I just heard Joan actually ask Joe, above, how liberals can be "feared" - suggestion: lay off the granola and soymilk,...and, oh yea, "no bed-wetting".)

Why The Mainstream Sucks: They Ignored NewAgers (Who Are Everywhere - Including In Government) And Went For Satanists: You Ever Seen A Real Satanist?

From "The Top 10 Most Absurd Time Covers of The Past 40 Years" by Reason Magazine.

It's TIME To Give Up The NewAge (And TIME)

"The truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this place, isn't there?

We have been tolerating cruelty, injustice, oppression, censorship, dehumanization through overspecialization, Mood-making, humanness deconstruction that leaves us so barren, naked and confused that we must cling on to the only thing we can. Whatever they have to offer us. And we know they need us but cannot let go.

We have turned the other cheek and have been force-fed their ideological principles so much that we have found ourselves regurgitating the same lies to our friend, our parents and loved ones.

Mutability has always been your only means to survival, hasn’t it? Where once you had the freedom to contrast, to think and speak for yourself, to design your life as you saw best, you now have censors and systems of supervision and surveillance coercing your conformity and incessantly soliciting your submission through the powers of repeated suggestion and subtle to blatant propaganda.

How did this come about? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others; of course there are. But who is pressing them accountable? Again, and I do apologize if it comes as a painful shock, but the matter must be told, and the veil over your eyes you have not minded or even noticed for so long, must be unwrapped if you wish to be free.

If you're looking for the ultimately guilty, you need only look into a reflective surface.

You accepted their titles: Gurus, Saint, boss-man or woman and accepted their provisions with little to no question. In defense of your autonomy you may have complained a few times about it and fooled yourself into thinking that you are not hopelessly enslaved, but you are.

Let them, if they wish, take your lives, take your money, your clothes, everything you hold dear in this world... but they cannot, unless you give it to them; your soul, your spirit, your integrity and your attention. They promised you order and even peace, and all they have demanded in return is your silent, obedient consent.

Right now I seek to end that silence. Right now! Right now I seek to destroy only perspectives. The perspective that you are not amazing and free, that you are not empowered, that you do not know better, that you do not hold sway in your reality. I seek to destroy the illusion that you need anything at all. I am destroying the illusion that you are what they say you are!

If you've seen nothing and the crimes all around remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow yourself to be unmarked by my perspective. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside Right now!!! Right Now! and give them a world they will not embrace at first glance. Give them a world where you are free from them and their systems of oppression. Their only power is your fear.

They have tried to sell you enlightenment, peace, tranquility and what you got was inequity, rules and disregard for your humanity and abilities. They are dwelling in the dreas-state, the realm of mysticism which only leads to more delusion. They knowingly or unknowingly prey on your trust and innocence and they do not embrace truth. They are not the figures of supreme faculty, and neither are you until you act upon truth with unwavering intent. Stand with me this night and look at each other, look at yourselves and charge forward in the name of freedom, in the name of truth and, God damn it, explode."

-- Gabriel Renfrow, a Maharishi University of Management senior, bravely stating the real effects of NewAge beliefs, while also (unknowingly?) addressing those portions of the Western World which have bought into these Eastern ideas - like at TIME Magazine - and watched as this Maharishit tore our world apart (all regularly documented on this blog) and criticizing it in just the manner it deserves - with The Macho Response - on the TM-Free Blog.

You MUST watch this video - to understand what's happened to the American Left - and (as Panda Bear, M.D. documents:) to America itself:

How To Jerk Yourself Off While Being Globally Warmed

There’s the semi-automated way…

The solo method…

Or with a ‘carbon neutral’ buddy…

Or…

The “Earth Hour” circle jerk…

…dramatized by Time Magazine, as reported by by P.J. Gladnick at NewsBusters:

Have you celebrated Earth Hour tonight by turning off your lights during the hour of 8:30 to 9:30 PM? Time magazine thinks this is so important that they have melodratically asked, Can Earth Hour Galvanize the Global Warming Fight? Writer Bryan Walsh seems to be desperately hoping that the Global Warming movement can find its "defining image".

Gladnick goes on to quote Time:

Every successful social movement has its defining images. Think of the civil rights movement, and the photos of protesters being attacked by police dogs and pummeled by high-pressure fire hoses. Or the Vietnam anti-war movement, and the video of body bags being beamed back to America's living rooms. Even environmentalism has its iconic images, like Cleveland's heavily polluted Cuyahoga River catching fire in the 1960s, smog wreathing Los Angeles's skyline during the next decade and even the stark hole in the ozone over Antarctica. To help galvanize public support — especially around a complex issue — the right picture really can be worth a thousand words.

When it comes to climate change, however, that picture hasn't yet been found…

Ha! Wrong!

TMR has found the perfect defining image:

Hurricane Katrina's destruction, drowning polar bears,…

…spreading deserts — these images are powerful in their own right, but they're not the sorts of pictures that can drive a movement. Precisely because global warming is so, well, global, potentially touching just about every corner of the world and every aspect of our lives, encapsulating it in a single image has proven elusive.

You can't connect climate change to a natural disaster as simply as you can connect a napalm bomb, a running child and the war in Vietnam. That's made building and sustaining a movement against global warming so challenging. We can't see it yet, not quite — and we can't see its victims. But by the time we can, it will be too late.

Don’t fret, the actual celebration wasn’t nearly as morose as that diatribe, evidenced by this video:



Burning candles in a fancy restaurant and on the beach, party boats lit up in blue on the water, all the cars to get there, the flame thrower blasts to light up several hot air balloons, burping, exhaling, flatulent yuppies… all give off carbon and other greenhouse gases.

Party on to save the planet, or to be seen as if you were.

"A very strong message" indeed.

NewsBusters update: North Korea celebrates Earth Hour 24/7.

That Whole Arianna Is A Cultist Thing? No Big Deal: Americans Deserve To Get The News "Crooked" From This Delusional Greek Diva

"Educated at Cambridge University, she launched herself in the U.S. on the back of a book about Maria Callas (her third of 12) and a few key friends. Pretty soon, almost virally, she knew everybody, was marrying an oil millionaire (with Barbara Walters for a bridesmaid) and stumping for the Republicans. Almost as fast, she was divorcing said millionaire, who turned out to be bisexual, and becoming a Democratic champion. In 2003 she ran for governor of California but withdrew after it was revealed that she had paid only $771 in state taxes for the previous two years. She was pilloried for her connection to John-Roger and the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, which some claim is a cult. Less hardy souls might have fled the spotlight, but not Huffington. On the Internet, after all, nothing is set in stone; everything can be rewritten. History can be changed with a simple refreshing of the page.

...HuffPo is not made for people who like their news straight."

-- Belinda Luscombe, on Arianna Huffington - even using NewAge language to call her "The Web's New Oracle" - in one of the most embarrassing, and infuriating, pieces of "journalism" we've seen since so-called "reporters" (including Huffington) assisted in "electing" Obama - using the same amount of integrity for this garbage - in TIME Magazine.

Predicting The Unpredictably Predictable (Yea!)

"Back on Saturday, August 23rd, I predicted that Time Magazine will choose Obama as their 'Man of the Year'. Yeah that was a tough one. You see, I know how liberals think and what liberals are going to do before they do. That's how predictable they are."

-- Joe Gelman, proving he really knows the liberal mind, which is why he's the conductor of the Neocon Express.

TMR votes for the "Vampire Obama",...

They Did Not Listen: They Did Not Know How,...

"Obama and his aides have declined to comment on the complaint. Asked about the matter at a photo op Tuesday afternoon, Obama himself said he was "saddened and sobered" by the news but that he had not been in contact with Blagojevich and was "not aware of what was happening." But in the coming days and weeks the campaign will have to address whether Blagojevich or any of his representatives actually talked to an Obama adviser or other emissary on the matter. The transition team will also, undoubtedly, try to distance Obama from a man whom he helped first elect back in 2002 and supported for reelection in 2006, as well as from a brand of corrupt Chicago politics that John McCain tried unsuccessfully to link him to during the presidential campaign."

-- Massimo Calabresi, writing about the previously-known corruption of (l. to r.) Blagojevich, Obama, and Daley, in TIME Magazine.

The Macho Response: Mark Halperin

"Media bias was more intense in the 2008 election than in any other national campaign in recent history, Time magazine's Mark Halperin said Friday at the Politico/USC conference on the 2008 election.



'It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war,' Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. 'It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage.' 



Halperin, who maintains Time's political site 'The Page,' cited two New York Times articles as examples of the divergent coverage of the two candidates.



'The example that I use, at the end of the campaign, was the two profiles that The New York Times ran of the potential first ladies,' Halperin said. 'The story about Cindy McCain was vicious. It looked for every negative thing they could find about her and it cast her in an extraordinarily negative light. It didn't talk about her work, for instance, as a mother for her children, and they cherry-picked every negative thing that's ever been written about her.'

The story about Michelle Obama, by contrast, was 'like a front-page endorsement of what a great person Michelle Obama is,' according to Halperin.

...Halperin's general point met with little resistance.



'I think it's incumbent upon people in our business to make sure that we're being fair,' he said. 'The daily output was the most disparate of any campaign I've ever covered, by far.'"

-- Alexander Burns, covering one of the few reporters who wasn't totally "in the tank" for Obama (and, thus, was almost alone in continuing to do his job) as covered on Politico.com.

Obama Knew Bill Ayers Was A Terrorist!!!

Mark Halperin of TIME Magazine starts acting like a journalist and keeps pressing until he gets the goods from a Obama spokesman! He even gets the guy to spout a bunch of NewAge nonsense about how Barack isn't judgmental about terrorism! Then the idiot, cornered by his own words, tries to be evasive and starts revealing how little he actually knows about anything. This is brilliant.

TMR gives a "Big Up" to Mark Halperin: dude, you're doing your profession proud.



Hat Tip: Little Green Footballs

Holding the politician's feet to the fire - we call it:

The Beginning Of The End Of The Beginning

I sure din't see any shortage of journalistic rigor when it was Nancy,...I'm just sayin'.

I Say It's Her Breath

"If the [Obama] endorsement wasn’t the cause of Oprah’s slide, it may be a symptom of a bigger problem that is less political than—in a way—religious."

-- James Poniewozik, wondering aloud for TIME Magazine

Don't Forget To Buy Your Dad A Really Nice Tie

"Momma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true.
Momma's gonna put all of her fears into you.
Momma's gonna keep you right here under her wing.
She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing."

-- Lyrics from Pink Floyd's "The Wall", taken from TIME Magazine's collection of the 10 Best & Worst Mothers in pop culture.

Of course, I'm going to focus on some of the bad girls because, well, they're bad! And do you seriously want a discussion about Dumbo's mother, and - I shit you not - "Gaia"? (TIME is just waaay too insanely NewAge,...)

Also, these characters speak to the motivations of many women throughout time: their need to control, to seek revenge, to break the rules - and kill. Unfair? Maybe. But in a time when emulating bad men seems to have been redefined as a goal for the "weaker sex" (and it's almost taken as a given that it's a woman's birthright to do so) it's at least something we should take note of:

TIME claims it's "not great" that Mrs. Robinson was married when she seduced Benjamin Braddock in "The Graduate" - not wrong, mind you, just not great. "The gracious thing to do would have been to step aside" when "Benjamin falls in love with Mrs. Robinson's daughter Elaine," intones the magazine, but, as we know, "the knives really come out" instead.

Cheating on your husband, deceiving your friends - and sleeping with their kids - only to attack them when they fall in love with someone their own age. All very - what's that word again? Oh, yes - "sophisticated".

That's the word used by the Mrs. Robinson Society, "a movable social club and think tank for sophisticated, vibrant, fully evolved ladies of a certain ilk". And what "ilk" is that, I wonder? Liars? Home-wreckers? Destroyers of the family? Child molesters? They don't say. There are two rabbits featured on their home page, though, so it must have something to do with "good breeding",...

TIME seems to have returned to it's senses when it comes to Hamlet's Queen Gertrude, so I'll let it's text stand on it's own:

" She's a complicated lady. Yes, she married her dead husband's brother, and yes, her new husband murdered her old one. But it's never quite clear how much of the crime she's in on: she never owns up to it, and she has more empathy for her tortured son than anybody else in the play. While everybody's trying to figure out what's bothering Hamlet, she's the only one willing to state the obvious: 'His father's death and our o'erhasty marriage.' Well, yes.

So what's she doing on this list? The special horror of Gertrude lies in the fact that she truly feels tender, maternal love for Hamlet — yet she betrays him anyway. One minute she's all compassion, the next she doth protest too much. And she's an incorrigible flirt, the original Elizabethan MILF: no wonder Hamlet could never settle down with that nice Ophelia, when his mom won't free him from her Oedipal apron-strings. 'What have I done,' she asks her sulky son, 'that thou darest wag thy tongue/In noise so rude against me?' Think for a minute, Gertrude. You'll get there."

The "special horror" link, above, leads to a page about "the most beautiful and at the same time the most nervous person" Warren Beatty had claimed to have ever "known", Julie Christie, who played Gertrude ("Such a weird part."). It ends with this perceptive bit of Christie's political foreknowledge:

"An inveterate lefty, she plans to leave Britain for somewhere like-minded, France or Spain. 'I won't see my own history being dismantled in front of my own eyes.'"

Smart lady. After making her name playing a self-destructive fashion model ("Darling"), a 1960s "free spirit" ("Petulia"), a tough, unflappable madam ("McCabe and Mrs. Miller") and, finally, a woman with Alzheimer disease who forgets about her husband and falls in love with another man ("Away From Her") I'd suggest France as the proper destination for her particular politics, outlook, and talents.

Like Gloria Steinem, after telling other women, since the 60's, there was something hideously wrong with the institution, Christie married "discreetly" in 2007.

Ah, Livia Soprano, who can forget her? Master manipulator of everyone she encountered, ultimately trying to have her own son killed by his uncle. (And the fact she also kind of looks like my ex -wife is fitting.) What a gift to mankind.

" Oh, she doesn't have it easy. Since his retirement, Enid's husband Alfred just sits in his chair all day doing nothing. Just sits there! Her daughter Denise is divorced. One son, Gary, won't stop criticizing, and the other, Chip, has gotten fired from his job. It's only natural that Enid should nag Alfred constantly, even though he's seriously ill, and that she should tell all her friends that Chip is "doing law," even though he's doing temp work for a law firm, and that she should hound Gary into a state of neurotic depression, even though he's worked all his life to please her, and that she should be convinced that her daughter is having an affair with a married man, even though she has no real evidence to support such a conclusion.

Enid wasn't born a monster. She was born a loving, sensitive, intelligent woman, but life disappointed her so incessantly and irreversibly that she can no longer appreciate those things she still has, and she makes sure everybody around her knows it. Unlike the other mothers on this list, she isn't an outsized creation; she's chillingly life-sized and utterly plausible. Which makes her that much scarier."

-- Lev Grossman, for TIME Magazine, on the mother in Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections", a book I own but haven't found time to read. I will now.

In another TIME article on the author, Richard Lacayo adds:

"The social disorders of the 21st century are expressed mostly through the personal distempers of the three siblings and their flight to the false consolations of sex, careerism and consumerism. 'They all lose something in leaving behind their parents' values,' says Franzen."

I can't wait for the movie.

It's weird when TIME's writers (in this case, Lev Grossman again) agree with me while trying to be cute. Check out this description of Carrie White's crazy mom:

" Granted, Carrie White probably shouldn't have telekinetically murdered her high school classmates at the prom. But her home life almost justifies it. Mrs. White — played in the movie by Piper Laurie — is a religious maniac who believes that Carrie is getting her period because she is sinful, and that the proper remedy, rather than a tampon and an awkward conversation, is to lock her in a closet and make her pray. Also, she refers to her daughter's budding breasts as "dirty pillows," which is just bizarre.



Laurie reportedly thought her character was so over-the-top that the movie she was acting in must be a comedy. Which of course didn't turn out to be the case, but you can see where she was coming from: Margaret White's religious mania is beyond caricature — "Eve was weak! Say it, woman!" Though in her defense, it's worth pointing out that on some basic level Carrie's mom was right: Carrie was a witch, and it probably would've been better if she hadn't gone to the prom. If she'd only been a little quicker with that kitchen knife, so much unpleasantness could have been avoided. Kids: what they really want is discipline."

Why aren't I laughing?

"Unlike many of the mothers on this list, Joan Crawford was, sadly, a real person: brilliant Oscar-winning actress, amazingly lousy mom. The movie 'Mommie Dearest' was based on a a memoir by Crawford's adopted daughter Christina the recounting the many traumas her vain, demanding, perfectionist mother visited on her as she wrestled with the (not unrelated) problems of her alcoholism, her flagging career and her hopeless love life. Matters come to a head in the unforgettable sequence where Joan goes berserk after discovering that Christina has hung her dresses on wire coat hangers. ('You live in the most beautiful house in Brentwood, and you don't care if your clothes are stretched out from wire hangers!' Well, she did have a point.)"



"Though the memoir was a huge bestseller — it was published after the mom in question's death — the movie was a critical disaster, and it's often said that Faye Dunaway, who played Joan Crawford, never quite recovered from the role. But 'Mommie Dearest' (as Joan instructed Christina to call her, and 'mean it!') quickly flipped into a camp classic — audiences actually showed up with wire hangers and cleaning supplies, ready to participate in the fun, a la 'Rocky Horror'. A bad mommy, even unto death, Crawford left her daughter precisely nothing in her will."

Yowsa! All TIME's wink-wink irony just falls away when the real world is unavoidable - which is (surprise, surprise) just like dealing with women!

See? It all holds together in the end. Kinda.

Yea, I'm outta here.