The Hateful Season

Ah, Fall is definitely in the air around here.  As I've said, and say constantly (some say too much), Oregon is the ONLY place to be this time of year.  On a good day it's foggy in the morning, clears off around noon, hits about 65 in the afternoon, and gets down to about 35 at night.  The trees are on fire with color, and the neighborhood wild life is active and busy gathering food for the winter.  We have a huge window looking into the back yard, and you can find me sitting here watching it all happen, brandy in hand, the latest Stephen King novel by my side.  Retirement is good, my friends. But I'll spare you any more of this drivel and digress ...

• We've noticed lately, with some degree of fear and loathing, the increasingly vitriolic hate
  
  messages being vomited out on the Internet.  Scanning some of the most popular news sites, for example, one can find the most obscene comments made by what seems to be professional haters.  While I doubt there are vast numbers of these people out there, they certainly are as vocal as they are undereducated.  For example, a small set of them seem to have great difficulty writing President Obama's name in a sentence without throwing in a couple "F" bombs.  Hate. Hate. Hate.  Some people think the anonymity of the World Wide Web brings out the worse of people.  Mark Morford comments: "You Are All Completely Insufferable"
• And while we're on the subject of hate, how 'bout them Republicans?  Some of them have such a hard time keeping their stupid idiotic thoughts to themselves, like the South Carolina Republican party official who thinks transgendered people should be "put in camps."  Well, I have nothing against camping, but I do think it should be voluntary.  Here's "10 Nutty, Vile and Absurd Utterances From the Fringe This Week."
• Arthur did a great job on his report concerning the government shutdown (see below), and he sent us this link written by Frank Rich.  It's a very interesting essay that points out that shutting down the government isn't by any means a new idea.  Check this appropriately named: "Frank Rich on the History of Government Shutdowns."
• And how about this?  It needs very little introduction, you just know it's going to be good.  Thomas Friedman compares the Tea Party wing of the G.O.P. to the tactics of the P.O.G. — “Party of God” — better known as Hezbollah.  Oh my, this is getting to be fun ...
• As we said, some people HATE President Obama.  And usually when someone HATES something or someone, they also FEAR it.  Here's an interview with a true typically misinformed Obama hater.  See if you can feel the fear in his answers.  Click Here
• Back in the dark ages, or was it the light ages? who remembers, I used to enjoy Dennis Miller's intellectual humor.  His humor at that time was mostly harmless, and most of it was really funny.  But something happened to Dennis Miller during the Bush administration.  Like an uneaten banana, he turned bad. He began spewing hateful rants against Liberals who were criticizing the Bush-Cheney plan to invade Iraq after the Sept. 11th attacks.  He turned vehemently Conservative.  He immediately ceased to be even remotely funny.  Last Friday Dennis, on a radio program, told an alleged small business owner to fire all his employees who support Obamacare.  Oh Dennis ...
• And speaking of Dick "We Call Him Dick" Cheney, it was revealed this week that The Dark Lord, former president George W. Bush’s right-hand man in the “war on terror,” had his heart implant altered to prevent terrorists from hacking into it.  Also mentioned in this article "Cheney said that despite being aware of numerous studies showing a significant link between severe heart disease and memory loss, depression and hampered decision-making, he wasn’t worried about it and was not counseled on it either."  I don't know whether to laugh my ass off, or just sit down and cry.

JP

PS:  Ed Note:  Here's some inadvertently left out comments from Arthur.  Thanks!)

Just to add one interesting note, the odd and secretive share of a Jamaican Investment Fund   "Ted" Cruz owns an "informal share" of?  The one registered in the British Virgin Islands?  (Sounds dodgy already, right?)  That isn't supposed to be worth anything, really, its just sort of a "dormant investment"?  That one?  Remember that about five months ago the British got ahold of all of the secret accounts in the British Virgin Islands, and are making quite heavy-handed deals with the owners to cough up taxes on those accounts and their earnings.  What do you want to bet that someone in our government, who doesn't like "Ted" very much this week, could convince the Brits to do a little digging for our government, informally of course, all between friends, and gather some interesting dirt on little Teddy?

I'm not entirely clear why, but I find the guy's face really, really yucky to look at, what he says is slimy and bullying, and in the end he reminds me of people that I instinctively dislike and distrust.  Aside from that he seems like a lovely rodent.

Arthur