Ten Gallon Liberal
Is you is or is you ain't a doggy?
I’ve long been a fan of Douglas Hofstadter. His writings on creativity, math, music, consciousness and humanity (among other subjects) are often astounding. A lot of people get scared off at a quick glance, but his fascinations with what might seem maddening...Where can I get me some of those president socks??
They shouldn’t let Mr. 28 Percent dress himself. If you saw this guy out in the wild, would you let him take charge of, say, your hot dog stand? Note especially the Scottish Terrier baseball cap. I guess he shops at truck stops.The only good thing you can say is...Marilyn Manson can't even shock himself anymore
Marilyn Manson is a tedious annoyance, but I’ve just noticed something that’s got me thinking. Is it just me, or is Marilyn here starting to resemble, in his own craggy way, late-era Liz Taylor? I’m not too sure what it might mean, except that the...In unusual mix-up, HIllary makes play for all of Quebec's voters
I say Marilyn Manson’s looking like Liz Taylor, and Hillary goes and chooses Celine Dion’s "You and I" as her campaign song. Did Barack Obama have a mole in her campaign organization? The masses who will mobilize against French Canada’s...In which the Ten Gallon Liberal points out proof that the fundamentalists are preventing, not spreading, Christian belief.
I’m the son of a Baptist (formerly Southern B.) preacher. I know a thing or three about fundamentalists, even though my family never qualified for that moniker. Now comes proof of something fundamentalists can’t fathom that seems obvious to the rest of us,...Fear, loathing, and Chick tracts
A Chick tract is a small (it’ll fit in your wallet) cartoon book by Jack Chick, a Christian fundamentalist. These tracts are sold as an aide to stealth witnessing–if you’re in, say, a phone booth at the airport and a little booklet or folded-up piece...You'd better be scared, brother
As I peruse these strange Chick tracts, I realize why exactly I was, as a child, not only certain of the existence of the bogeyman, but 100 percent convinced he was outside the window slavering in preparation for slurping me up in my sleep for a ghoulish dinner....Goodbye, George (III)
Let’s all celebrate independence from a man who wouldn’t listen to his people, who put profit and empire above the well-being of citizens, who thought he ruled by divine right and was above any law. The colonials were self-sufficient people who took rule...As the Bush falls
Watching the demise of this sad excuse for a leader is finally providing some entertainment, and at least that’s something. Having returned from a nice long weekend, I was pleased to see that Bush continues to plunge yet lower in approval numbers. This has...Welcome to the PDR-USA (TM)
I’ve spent plenty of time writing about the excesses of the fundamentalists, particularly the Baptist variety I was exposed to as a child. I recall that, at the time of my first long article on the convergence of Bush and the Baptists, I had some dim notion that...Filibusted
Where did the word "filibuster" go? Not the idea, the word. Remember when Republicans were crowing about allowing "up or down votes" on Bush’s maniac Supreme Court appointees? Remember how they were threatening the "nuclear option"...Copyright this, coppah!
It would be the most brilliant prison break ever, had the plan worked. Instead, we now know copyright law is not the ticket out of the hoosegow. Courtesy of a UK newspaper, we have word of the elaborate scheme, carried out in Louisiana. It’s my favorite story of...Impeachment NOW or we become a police state, says Paul Craig Roberts, Reagan Assistant Treasury Secretary. Had enough yet?
You must act. A terrible convergence is upon us, and the moment has come to stand up, through impeachment, for your democracy or wave goodbye. If you won’t believe a Texas liberal, just keep reading–Reagan’s Assistant Treasury Secretary is even more...MC Rove gets jiggy with the bureaucrats so that we can all sleep soundly in a Republican world
While we wait for John Conyers to bring the contempt hammer down on the lily-livered jellonauts of the White House, here’s some entertainment. We knew that Karl "Turdblossom" Rove and his staff offered a fine briefing to the General Services...Will W have to sally forth in his Y-fronts mumbling “attack” before we can throw the bums out? What will it take?
The BBC says W’s grandfather was part of a plot to overthrow FDR (no, really) and adopt fascism. The GOP’s emails reveal widespread vote suppression. Gonzo is a liar. The past scandals amount to a vast pile of wrongdoing, from torture to vote suppression...Arlen Specter discovers that the sky is a sort of sky-blue color
I respect the senatorial roasting of Gonzalez, but it’s exasperating, the dimness of our senators sometimes. Today Specter has discovered the following about Justices Alito and Roberts: Specter, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, who served as...Destroying the evidence: most of Ohio's 2004 ballots destroyed, despite a federal order to preserve them.
It was all by accident, in all those 55 counties where they’re gone, they swear. And all the tremendous discrepancies in Ohio happened to increase Bush’s totals by an enormous coincidence. Oh well! Just relax and enjoy some nice Kool-Aid. Everything is...That Karl Rove just knows how to give gifts for any occasion! What a guy!
Out in liberal Blogistan, it’s being pointed out that the folks dispatched by Karl Rove to brief executive agencies on which Republicans to help claim their briefings were thank-yous to the political appointees at the various agencies. This brings to mind one...How They Learned to Stop Worrying and Love George W. Bush
George W. Bush, armed with his halting, homespun testiness, last week referred to the Director of National Intelligence, a full-grown adult named Mike McConnell, as “Mr. DNI.” If Bush’s plummeting poll numbers are any indication, most of the country...Closing the door on spying.
The current Dem rollover is part of a pattern: the legal vulnerability of the Bush Posse is being rapidly remedied. There is currently a blog commenter at large on the Internet espousing the viewpoint, which seems to hold much truth, that what cannot be classified and...Congratulations to the most psychotically disconnected person in all of America! And no, it's not that guy.
First, the neo-con Project for the New American Century, in 2000, said we need a “catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor” in order to be driven quickly enough to the empire-building excesses they champion. They got that reprehensible...When the water boils, how does the frog hop?
What happens when you add something to a super-saturated solution? Cause me, I’m feeling super-saturated. Though I’m not a solution. Heck, I’m not a problem, a solution, a liquid or gas. Just a dude with a big hat.Anyway. I feel as if our political...Now your tax dollars buy even more propaganda!
The shifting sand upon which our democracy has sunk is a 20th-century concept: professional lying. "Public relations," they would rather you say. As an arts writer, I deal with "publicists" every day, people who tell me the band they represent is...A modest, but heartening, victory in the battle to stop Bush's politicization of everything.
In America, you can’t use taxpayer funding to host the president and then cleanse the area of dissenters. That is, we can safely say, unAmerican. Therefore it is common, codified practice for Bush events, according to the ACLU:"The ACLU said in a statement...America? What America?
From today’s Washington Post: A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of "deterring potential protestors" from President Bush’s public appearances around the country....A Farewell to Turdblossom
There are those who believe Karl Rove ruined the country. And no one yet has said it better than Joseph Galloway, writing in the newspaper of my hometown, Fort Worth, Texas. No excerpt is enough, so kindly read the whole thing. You won’t regret it.My Top 3 contenders to replace Gonzales
The fellow who reportedly spent a good few minutes apiece reviewing death penalty cases for Governor Bush, advising Bush to fry people even when there were things like retardation or evidence of innocence, is gone. He won’t be missed by anyone except (maybe)...Breaking: Grand Band Slam makes Schwaber scentless
I’ve had my head buried in Band Slam copy lately. It’s always an interesting proposition, cobbling together many pages of the musings of Valley musicians. (I know this isn’t politics, but when I’m not in this ten gallon hat, I’m the...A temporary tip of the hat
The Ten Gallon Liberal is heading to the ranch for some r&r for the holiday week, but I look forward to cantering back into town and continuing to get blogalicious. Please, in the meantime, be careful if you visit any RNC restrooms.The solution to our economic woes lies in grammar.
Having moved along a good few dogies, Ten Gallon is back under the wide brim. (I always think it adds to one’s mystique to employ the third person needlessly.) But now that I think about it, maybe I’ve just hit upon the economic recovery solution...Dr. Strangelove, wherefore art thou?
At what point do you just throw up your hands, cover your critical thinking in bacon grease and throw it to the dogs? Democracy was a pretty good idea, but in the end, I guess we just couldn’t take the responsibility.Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant...Project Censored: one stop shopping for all your anti-totalitarian needs
The Advocate used to run the Project Censored top 10 stories the media missed. I wish we still did. But it’s out there. I can hardly take reading this year’s version, a rundown of how close we truly are to real, live, actual totalitarianism, but if you...Don't walk like a terrorist, fellow citizen!
Here’s an idea: ask experts what causes terrorism. Then try to eliminate the causes. Then there will be less terrorism.But that wouldn’t benefit the bottom lines of our massive defense industry companies, to whom many of our top government officials have...Just another day in the People's Democratic Republic
The Republicans successfully filibustered Joe Biden’s attempt to restore habeas corpus, the only protection against wrongful imprisonment or indefinite imprisonment without charge, to "enemy combatants." Keep in mind that Our Dear Leader has proclaimed...Ken Burns, a Ken Burns production by Ken Burns (and a war and stuff)
I once interviewed Ken Burns. He announced to his entourage he was going to be interviewed by the Valley Advocate, then asked if he could call me "Valley." He spoke without looking my direction, reciting canned answers so full of hot air they were nearly...Move over NSA, it's time for eavesdropping WITH ADS!!!
Just before 9/11/2001, I was engaged in a fresh round of being appalled at the absurd excesses of the corporate world. Remember corporateers? They’re the only people with even less respect for your privacy than Bush. Don’t believe me? Just try (and I have)...Liberty or death, from the wimp perspective
The current domestic struggle is over nothing less, I would argue, than democracy itself. We Americans have long been proud of our rights and freedoms, and repeatedly declared a willingness to die for those things. But now we have a Director of National Intelligence...I mean, the thing is, it's been his leg for years.
There’s a feud going on in North Carolina over a fella’s leg. I wish I’d made this up. He had it amputated, then he stored it in a smoker. Probably in case something down the line costs him an arm and a leg. (Thank you. Please tip your waitress.)...Do you still get mints on the pillow?
Nothing says relaxation like a UFO abduction. Little wonder, then, that a hotel in Osaka, Japan will, for a small fee, give you the chance to achieve a little R&R in your own personal alien abduction room. No word on whether it comes with a free probe. Thanks to...So that's what happened to the Egyptians
Turns out,says dentist and hypnotherapist Dr. Bruce Goldberg (who clearly ought to know), the ancient Egyptians had teevee. Oh, the possibilities. The Nile Crocodile Hunter, Martha Stewart’s Living in the Afterlife, Who Wants to Be A Pharaoh? I wonder if they...If the Democrats won't, maybe the leprechauns will open the door to impeachment?
Yesterday, a man with no pants in Cincinnati declared that he was let into the car in which he was sleeping by a leprechaun.How to tell your basic ridgerunner from your basic gullyjumper
Be back soon, after being repeatedly stuffed full of proper Southern food. So here’s a little lesson in geocultural labelling in the meantime, about which I hope to return with more information. Seems in certain parts, namely some of those where I’m about...Elvis, half-Vulcans and Northampton
Having just returned from Graceland, my head full of rhinestones, it seemed almost normal to be shaking hands with Leonard Nimoy. What I mean is, this was, for me, a convergence sponsored by whatever capricious MC it is who brings a sense of importance to dreaming. It...Fatback, flapjacks, Flywheels and beery chocolate
I have no idea what those have in common, but I’m writing about Flywheel, and those other words just showed up. Flywheel has never been my favorite place in terms of its sound or its size, but it’s certainly my favorite venue in the Valley (besides...You say dilemma, I say dilemna
There’s a hole in the universe, and this may, apparently, prove that there is another universe. That makes me feel a whole lot better somehow. We’ve screwed things up so royally in this one that somebody or other deserves a chance to do better. I have my...The neo-McCarthy road show, coming to a gallows near you!
Imagine a future in which the government creates mobile commissions to conduct McCarthy-esque hunts for "homegrown terrorists" nationwide. Keep in mind that Freedom of Information Act requests revealed that in our own fair Valley, the American Friends...Soft in the head
As the son of a Baptist minister, I often read with dismay the incredible thoughts of some of the most far-gone among the evangelical set. The true top of the heap is probably the apocalyptic crew, the sort who try to calculate the exact date of the Rapture by turning...What spring is like on Jupiter and Mars
Our dumb world gets a little brighter for me when I look out at that whole space thing. Somewhere there is a world where things work out to not be so mind-numbingly stupid as our current dead end of consumer "culture." So it was with great pleasure that I...The Ad-pocalypse is here
I despise the advertising industry’s excesses. As luck would have it, print ads don’t bug me, because you control your exposure. (This is fortunate when one works for a newspaper.) You can turn the page anytime, or fold it over to remain undistracted from...Last chance to hold Bush accountable for spying?
Chris Dodd may not be blowing the top out of the polls, but he’s a principled man. I respect that tremendously, especially on this day when Dodd is being forced to filibuster because his own Senate Democratic "leadership" is bringing the wrong bill to...When you make lawyers angry…
Bush has really done it now. He’s got 1,000 lawyers mad and putting together a posse: visit www.thenation.comStill the one, baby!
We’ve still got it! Just when you thought the U.S. was suffering too badly from the international damage of being led by a dolt, something comes along that reminds you we’re still capable of some real achievements. Witness the latest report from Privacy...Help find intelligent life!
Call me a geek, but I love SETI@home. Way back when my computer was something along the lines of a glorified electric typewriter, I donated all my spare computing time to the SETI@home program. Long story short, it’s a massive project to sift through the...BREAKING: Is this real live actual treason, covered up by our government?
Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator, says she could put many Bush insiders behind bars. Plus a few non-Bushies, it turns out. If you don’t know who Edmonds is, you should find out. Her story is quite involved, so rather than tell it all, I’ll go with...Madame President is a fine thing, but Reverend President?
Our nation is a lovely experiment in the ideals of the Enlightenment. Our constitution was drafted with Article 6–no religious tests to hold office–in place for a reason. The early American theocrats didn’t like the Constitution, seeing it as...We can't prove that we're missing millions of emails…
The Bush endgame unveiled: we’d be happy to provide the incriminating emails if you can tell us what they are so we can find them, even though you can’t know what they are since we can’t find them. Oh, and we can’t prove that we’re...Why we can't all just get along
The ever-brilliant Glenn Greenwald skewers "bipartisanship" with the swift sword of truth, which, it turns out, is covered with the blood of Democrats. He offers this helpful breakdown of Senatorial votes on controversial laws, which reveals the true...Bush imitates Putin
The used to call journalism the Fourth Estate. I guess now we’ll have to call it the fourth branch of the Bush Unitary Executive. Seems one of the guys who broke the warrantless surveillance story has now been served with a subpoena for his truly heroic efforts....“It would be a heck of a lot easier if this was a dictatorship, just so long as I'm dictator.”
Today is one of those days—cold, pleasant enough—that makes midwinter in New England enjoyable. At least, that is, to someone like me who grew up thinking of winter as the 57 minutes in January when the Texas heat gives up, throws down a few half-hearted...E-Edition
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