Drill, Baby, Drill!

T. here, reporting live from the floor of the Republican National Convention. I'd like to share with you a few of my favorite moments from the kum-ba-ya fest that's going on here in St. Paul:

1. Governor Sarah Palin's speech. Ooooh, red meat. I love's me the red meat. What better way to deflect attention away from your inexperience and lack of a plan for the economy than by attacking the "liberal elite" and mocking the man who more than half of the country is currently supporting. Give 'em hell, Sarah! She sounded like someone running for school board president, not Vice President of the country. But I hear she's getting high praise for her speech. Some are calling it reminiscent of Ronald Reagan. Oh me, oh my, the spin, the SPIN!!! We'll see how she does during the VP debate when she'll be flying without a teleprompter.

2. Rudy 9/11. Man, this guy gets nastier and nastier every time I hear him speak. For him, a guy who based his entire presidential campaign and post-political career on profiting from one of this country's greatest tragedies, to criticize ANYONE for pursuing political office for selfish reasons, is laughable. I actually used to respect the guy, but now, the sight of him gives me dry heaves. He is insincerity personified. To his credit, he did wait until 2/3 of the way through his speech to bring up 9/11. As he stood in front of a beautiful New York backdrop during sunset. Of course, it wasn't midtown they showed. It was downtown, so you could see the empty space where the Twin Towers used to be. Nice touch. Real subtle-like.

3. The Hottest Governor From The Coolest State. Delegates were actually wearing pins that said this. Sexist much? Dang that Palin is making HUGE strides for women. Here's to you, ladies! When's the swimsuit competition?

4. Drill, Baby! Drill! Yes, I heard Republicans chanting this on the convention floor. They want us to drill for oil, environment be damned! Drill in Alaska! Drill off the coast of Florida! Drill in your backyard! Drill in mine! Gasoline costs are through the roof and they want us to keep injecting the oil needle into our thick, blue vein. They sound like drug dealers cajoling us into another hit. "Just one more, baby, c'mon! You know you like it! Drill, Baby, Drill!" You think this party is going to get us off of foreign oil? Riiiiight. We'll be wearing oxygen tanks first.

5. Mitt's speech. Mitt Romney gave a great speech tonight. For 1984. Liberal this, tax that, America's the greatest country in the world. Annnnnd, that's a wrap! I thought I fell into a time warp for a second there. I also think he forgot that the Republicans have controlled the Presidency for the last eight years and Congress for six of the last eight. So WTF are you talking about? I'm quite pleased we don't have to hear from Guy Smiley for another 4 years, at least.

6. They've got nothing to say. Nothing on the economy. Nothing on foreign policy. Nothing for the future. They have no plans, no new ideas, no goals for this country. It's more of the same. So what do they do? They mock and tear down the other side. When the Democrats do it, they're called "The Angry Left." When Republicans do it, it's perfectly fine.

7. Speaking of The Angry Left... Georgie called us out last night, called us the "Angry Left." Fuck yeah, we're angry. Angry about an incompetent President, a senseless war, billions of wasted tax dollars and dead Americans and Iraqis, lobbyists controlling power in this country, an energy policy that's driving us to extinction, and a fucked up health care system. Most of all, we're angry about a political leadership that is doing NOTHING to fix these problems because they're too busy playing whack-a-mole with each other. So yes, we're angry.

But not as angry as Rudy Guiliani. Someone give that dude a lollipop. Or better yet, a high colonic. Get all that bile out.

8. I have now memorized every second of John McCain's captivity in Vietnam. Give it to the Republicans, not a single speaker in the past two days left the stage without walking us through "John's Story." I actually heard Fred "boop boop" (that's the sound from Law & Order) Thompson talk about how the Vietnamese knocked out McCain's teeth "at the gums." McCain's a hero, okay, I get it. John Kerry had three purple hearts and was running against a man who DODGED service (unless you count ten minutes of working on planes on U.S. soil "service"), and no one gave a fuck. Actually, it was worse than that. The right wing tried its best to turn those purple hearts into a deceitful lie. Now we're supposed to award McCain the Presidency because of his service? Idontthinkso. He's a perfectly decent Senator. That's reward enough.

9. Lieberman. Et tu, Joe? Two years ago (when he was trying to get re-elected), he was singing Obama's praises. Now, Obama's not fit to lead. What a difference two years makes. Just ask Sarah Palin.

I'm glad these conventions are over. I've gotta start writing about something else.

I Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident

When in the Course of late night mind farts it becomes necessary for one blogger to dissolve the good taste that has connected him with society and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitles him, a decent respect to the thoughts of his own mind requires that he should declare the opinions that impel him to his mind's ambition.

I, T., hold these truths to be self-evident:

Rich and famous man does not always equal happy man. You think if you're loaded with cash and have put out a few hit movies or hit songs, you'd be relatively happy in life. Not so. How many fucked up celebs can we count out there? Even going by recent events, we've had Ms. Spears in and out of rehab and sporting the cueball look; Lindsay Lohan/Paris Hilton/Nicole Ritchie -- I get them all confused. Which one is the redhead with the nice snoobies who was in that remake of Herbie The Love Bug? I can't remember. Anyway, now come to read about Owen Wilson's recent attempt to kill himself and it's really sad. The other ones are just wilding, I think. They're too stupid to really know what they're doing. But Owen is 38 and relatively intelligent, as I understand. He's old enough to have thought things through before deciding to off himself. It really sucks, and one has to wonder what it is that got to him. I've loved him in almost everything he's been in ("Hey, J.C. was Jewish!"), so I'd really like him to stick around for awhile. Bottom line though: rich and famous man, does not mean a happy man. See Cobain, Kurt.

A great many beauty pageant contestants are blithering idiots. I give you Exhibit A, Miss Teen USA 2007 contestant, Lauren Caitlin Upton, of South Carolina:



Query: why don't they just end the pageant after the swimsuit competition? Why make them talk? The fact that Ms. Upton finished third runner up just goes to show you how fucked up beauty pageants are.

White, married Republican Congressmen really like extramarital @o@k and pu$$y; they just don't like to advertise it. About ten years ago, they impeached President Clinton for getting his pole smoked a few times by a 21 year-old intern and lying about it to a grand jury. Lying about getting a hummer. To a grand jury. Does it seem absurd to any of you that our nation's President should have been put in the ridiculous position of being forced to testify to a grand jury about getting his knob waxed by a young woman in the White House? (Yes, that's three -- count'em three -- euphemisms I've used for "blowjob" in this paragraph.) It sure seemed stupid to me at the time, though I wish when he was called out on it, Clinton would have told the truth.

You may recall back then that so many self-righteous Republican assholes got on their high horse to chastise Clinton for his sexual escapades, as if THEY were immune from reproach. As if THEY were not guilty of similar transgressions. Well people, if there's one thing we hate here at M-A, it's hypocrisy. And Republicans are fucking hypocrites. I'll say it. Indeed, in recent years, we've had more Republican sexual scandals than you can shake a dick at: Mark Foley (Florida representative, sending sexually explicit emails and instant messages to underage boys); Bob Allen (Florida state rep, soliciting prostitution from undercover police officer); Bob Livingston (Louisiana representative, resigned from House after revelations came out about adulterous affair); U.S. Senator David Vitter (adulterous affairs with D.C. prostitutes). We've had Gary Condit (adulterous affair with an intern who mysteriously turned up dead); we've had Newt Gingrich, one of Clinton's biggest critics (adulterous affair). And now we've got Larry Craig, the esteemed Republican Senator from the wonderful State of Idaho, who, last June, pled guilty to disorderly conduct for "lewd behavior" in a bathroom stall at the Minneapolis Airport. Here is how it went down for the Honorable Senator from the State of Idaho, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

According to police reports, Craig kept watching the undercover police officer through a crack in the bathroom stall, Roll Call reported. Craig then entered the next-door stall and placed his luggage against the opening under the stall door.

"My experience has shown that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall," said the officer, Sgt. Dave Karsnia.

The report continued: "At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot. . . . The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area. . . .

At one point, police reports said, Craig handed the arresting officer a business card that identified him as a U.S. senator and said, "What do you think about that?"

Roll Call reported that a Craig spokesman said the incident is a "he said/he said misunderstanding." Craig denied any lewd intentions and told police he has a "wide stance" in the bathroom and reached down to pick up a piece of paper from the floor.

"It should be noted that there was not a piece of paper on the bathroom floor, nor did Craig pick up a piece of paper," Karsnia wrote in the police report.

According to the report, Minneapolis airport police have made "numerous arrests regarding sexual activity in the public restroom."

Oh, I'll bet Senator Craig adopts a "wide stance" alright. The full police report can be found here, if you want to read it. Say cheese, Larry!



The irony is that the horniest, most sexually free-swinging Republicans are precisely those who, like Senators Craig and Vitter, have crafted this absurdly false reputation of being family men and "pro marriage" and "pro family values." And it cracks me up to learn that Foley and Craig are against gay rights and gay marriage when they so avidly pursue gay sex. YA FUCKIN' HYPOCRITES!!!!!!!!

Dentists aren't necessarily sadists, they just dress and act like them. If you're like me, and you're petrified of the dentist, you know what I'm talking about. I have spent more time than I cared to this summer with my ass planted in a plastic-covered dentist's chair having my mouth manhandled by a diminutive but surprisingly strong female dentist in midtown. I plan to write more about this at some point, so I'm not going to go into detail here, but I'll just say that no matter how gentle and nice they are, having 34 hooks, drills, fingers, circular mirrors, cotton balls, metal clamps, and suction tubes in your mouth all at once does not a pleasant afternoon make. Right now, the inside of my mouth feels like a reconstruction project on This Old House. More about this later.

I love the International Film Channel, but I really don't need to see a documentary about people committing suicide by jumping off The Golden Gate Bridge a half hour before I go to sleep. And they somehow managed to capture real people doing it in real time. Apparently, the filmmaker tricked the Bridge Committee into allowing him to film the bridge for months, and he managed to capture 23 of the 24 suicides that took place in 2004. Then he interviewed the friends and family members of the deceased without telling them that he had footage of their deaths. Nice guy. Anyway, the movie was incredibly morbid but compelling at the same time. I couldn't stop watching it. Then it ended and I had to go to sleep. Not well planned on my part. Well, at least I'm not putting it into my head again before I have to go to sleep tonight.