Free Republic

Did you help put America's worst prez into power? Time to make amends - Sure, you could start with an open-palmed apology, a profoundly contrite on-your-knees sort of thing, maybe an open letter in your local paper or a heartfelt speech at your next dinner party whereby you stumble though some sort of "I don't know what the hell I was thinking" or "I must've been blind" or "Wow, that mescaline sure was potent" type of defense for your unfortunate and reprehensible choices. But the fact is, that's not really gonna cut it. Of course, you could do the obvious...

Pause TV show, order that actor's shoes, car, breasts. It's retail nirvana! This is my dream. It is but a humble vision, completely reasonable, also very, very American in its blatant love of large amounts of unnecessary crap combined with a screaming disregard for anything resembling tact or humility or the simple act of, let's say, tasteful restraint. It unfolds thusly: I stroll the city streets, enter humbly into a cafe, or maybe a bookstore, boutique, log cabin, museum, dog kennel, crematorium. It does not matter, for wherever I happen to be, I will surely see something I want. Perhaps...

Love 'em or hate 'em, the American land yacht is rumbling into the sunset. Rejoice? Let us, first and foremost, be perfectly clear: it ain't over yet. Millions of dinosaurs still roam the Earth, the giant meteor of merciful annihilation has yet to strike, complete and total upheaval is still merely pending. But it's coming fast. You can sense the shadow, the darkening, the imminent and oily doom. The dinosaurs are trembling, scribbling out their wills as fast as possible. They know the end is near, the signs are all in place, as that giant $63K Toyota Land Cruiser V8...

The crusty ol' Repub says he has no clue how to use a computer. Isn't that cute? Dear McCain presidential campaign: You know what's funny and cute and just a little bit sad? Wacky old pre-industrial war-hungry guys admitting they don't know a computer from a microwave oven, a hyperlink from a heart med, can't turn on one of those newfangled PC things if his life depended on it and/or he wanted to see what his weird tattooed bi-curious grandson is posting on his MySpace home docking station whateveryoucallit. Adorable! Cuter still is when said wisecrackin' curmudgeon admits he depends...

Bush lifts drilling ban, oil execs leer, nation cringes, Obama sighs I admit to bafflement. I admit to a bit of total confusion mixed with a certain level of stupefied awe and teeth-rattling frustration as to why anyone with the mental acuity of more than a housefly would think that stabbing more holes into Alaska and the eastern seaboard in the search for a few remaining precious drops of oil is a good idea, would solve anything at all, is anything more than the equivalent of hurling matches at the devil. Perhaps I'm missing something. Perhaps there's some dark, secret...

It is the end of the nutball Christian right. Here is your proof. To go - Hey, remember the angry evangelicals? The quivering clan of militant Christoholics who propelled Bush into office and seized the national narrative for a few terrifying moments about five years back, ran deep into the woods with it and rubbed it all over their naughty bits in a frenzy of fear and confusion and lust for all things homophobic and saccharine and spiritually denigrating? Dying. Nearly dead. Gasping their last. Very soon to be a footnote, a caricature, a gag, a punch line, blasted to...

Has the Internet killed the joys of sitting down with a good book? The pile is waiting. The pile is getting higher. The pile looks impressive, probably isn't, still feels slightly overwhelming, vaguely threatening, even as it sighs, waits, drums its fingers on the inside of my skull, promising all manner of wonder and insight and syntactical bliss if I'd just, please, maybe, right now, even for just an hour or three, pay it some serious, focused attention. Please? It's a bit of a problem. More than that, it's a moral, ethical, personal issue, a deep indignity of the soul,...

Never forget: The brutal effects of the Bush regime will be felt for generations - Ah, so this is how it's gonna be. Like recurring cancer. No, more like a rogue rash, an STD, flaring up at unexpected times and in unexpected places and when it fades, you gently let yourself forget all about it until it suddenly erupts and hits hard and ruins your day, and then you can only sit back and moan softly, slather on ointment, shudder. Wait, one more: Maybe it's most like a nasty intestinal worm, a wicked parasite like those you suck down in...

Earth in crisis, food and water increasingly scarce, people freaking out. Should you join them? It would be nice to think much of the ugliness is coming to an end. It would be lovely to imagine the era of brutal Earth-mauling technologies, coal extraction and petroleum and industrial agriculture and strip mining and clear cutting and industrial fishing and all rest, all the more rapacious and unforgiving notions of how we exist on this planet are, after an era of unchecked capitalistic greed and waste and over-consumption right along with almost zero concern for consequences and the ethics of sustainability,...

Revealed! The most incredible string of words you've never heard before. Plus: Bill O'Reilly loses - It is nearly summertime in the Year of Our Google, and here in the golden land known as California the following startling and once-inconceivable lament can now be heard: Dammit, with gas zooming toward five bucks a gallon and airlines doubling fares and charging me for a single checked bag, how the hell am I going to afford to travel to all my gay friends' legal weddings across the state this summer? Please note the historic power therein. Because such a peculiar, momentous string...

Without your dark and spectacular failures, we wouldn't be so ready to leap forward. Kudos! And then it came to pass that I happened to catch the tail end of a recent episode of "Miami Ink," that odd little reality show on TLC about the trials and tribulations of an unabashedly macho but still adorably funky Florida tattoo shop offering all sorts of engaging quirks, especially if you harbor a mild appreciation for decent Koi fish tattoos and giant ridiculous motorcycles and lots of sweaty siliconed sun baked Miami cheese. This episode featured the story of a young, fresh-faced Iraqi...

California's extraordinary, newfound majority support for gay marriage? Thank the young - It's a generational thing, you could say, grinning just a little as you do so. It's because younger people today — those under, say, 45 or so — have been far more exposed to the gay "lifestyle" and to more fluid notions of gender and sexuality, to the idea of homosexuality as a common, nonthreatening, everyday, what's-the-big-deal shrug, and therefore, as a demographic, they/we understand that allowing gay people to wed doesn't actually mean our shaky notions of God and family and society will collapse like a priest's...

Spiritual wise ones say: This sure ain't no ordinary politician. You buying it? I find I'm having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and miserable, deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped persons of all shapes and stripes and I'm having it in particular with those who seem confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the same thing: What the hell's the big deal about Obama? I, of course, have an answer. Sort of. Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter,...

Will insane gas prices finally pummel us into evolving? How bad will it get? It should be a truly fascinating — albeit possibly enormously grim — thing to watch, one of the more dramatic and revolutionary market-driven shifts in modern history, upheaving everything we've become so accustomed to and changing behaviors and attitudes and alliances and political agendas and ass-girths and no I'm not talking about the "Lost" finale or the new 3G iPhone or how Brangelina's twins are a sure sign of the Second Coming. It's the massive, painful spike in gas and oil prices, that most wonderful/frightening harbinger...

Hillary was ready. Hillary was unstoppable. Hillary was, by all accounts, a lock. What the hell happened? Are you paying any sort of attention to this moment in time? Are you reading bits and hints about the transformation, the shift, the unusual and slightly surreal energy coursing through the nation? Are you tattooing this seminal period on the sacrum of your sociopolitical consciousness? Are you under 50? Then there's been nothing else like this in your lifetime. And there probably never will be again. You gotta take it all in, you know? Because it was no time at all ago,...

Gas is $4 a gallon, but bike sales are up. Gay marriage is here, but so is the apocalypse. It's your choice! The good news: Gas is racing merrily past four bucks a gallon and oil is skipping over a previously unheard-of $130 a barrel and Big Oil execs are snorting like pigs in diamond-crusted mud, and hence people are quickly rethinking their transportive ways, driving less and dumping the land yacht in favor of more Priuses and Mini Coopers and Smart cars, as ultra-efficient auto technology suddenly becomes very attractive indeed. Positive side effects: Bike sales are way up,...

Satan's plan to make uptight straight people "really uncomfortable" working out "fabulously," say Bay Area gays - We are all going to die. Very, very soon. Did you know? Apparently, the signs are all in place and the plague is clearly nigh and Armageddon is fast upon us because, oh my angry heterosexual god, the announcement has now been handed down: Couples who deeply love one another may now get married in California. It's true. Wait, there's more. The couple in question might both have penises. Or they both might not. This is the crazy, terrifying new thing: It is...

You think a $100K salary is a lot? $500K? Please. The truly wealthy scoff at your paltry breadcrumbs. Then it came to pass that I stumbled across this story from Forbes magazine, which is officially called "Forbes" but is actually called "Forbes oh my God we worship ruthless CEOs like shiny meth in the summertime," and among the glittering ads for luxury intergalactic travel and sleek private jets and $50K Rolexes and big phallic yachts and surreal 20-page ad inserts for Abu Dhabi megadevelopments, there was an article about the new home being built in Mumbai right now for Mukesh...

Gas, video games, meditation, booze. What, you were planning on paying bills? As if -- Here's the bad news: Your little recession-deflecting tax rebate? No rebate at all. Not even close. It's more like this: You've been continuously mugged and beaten and robbed blind for the past seven years straight, and as you lay there on the cold, hard economic ground, bleeding and gasping and wondering what the hell happened to your vacation time and your health care plan and your mortgage payment, your attackers scoff and leer and toss a couple of bloodstained nickels on your pulverized face and...

Behold, the ideal Republican wife: Prim, sexless, nearly useless, lets the men do the real thinkin'. Hot!I fondly recall, just before the tragic Bush/Kerry presidential election, an impassioned discussion I had with a family friend, a conservative Catholic mother of four and grandmother of six, headstrong, outspoken, hilarious, a real no-BS matriarch of her big crazy messy family and clearly the wearer of the pants in her marriage and a woman whom I always liked for her wit and her outsized personality, despite her unfortunate choice of religious and political affiliation, a woman who, it turned out in our discussion,...

Support the humble monks? You bet. But oh, let's not forget our own wonderfully abundant atrocities - I know I know I know — we don't exactly have huge platoons of nasty jackbooted soldiers storming through the streets in riot gear and gas masks and large sticks bashing down on the shiny heads of peaceful monks. We don't exactly have smashed and burning vehicles and dead bodies in the streets and vicious martial law, ethnic cleansings and curfews and media lockouts and blocked Internet access and all sorts of nefarious, disturbing reports of brutality and beatings and death. Well, except...

It's official: Sex therapists suck in bed. Also: Insane Idaho Senate candidates, Spitzer in the back - Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the media ... All the following Associated Press stories are true, except where they have been made completely false. Names have not been changed to protect anyone at all, unless they've been made up entirely. Caveat emptor. Gratis dictum. Nil desperandum. Ready? Allegations that third-graders hatched an elaborate plot to knock out, handcuff and stab their teacher were met with shock by neighbors and with doubt by psychiatry experts who said it...

No, not that. Or that or that or that. It's that other thing, deeper, crazier, intuitive - Nope, it's not what you might think. The best thing about Barack Obama has almost nothing to do with him as a person or as a leader or even as Oh My God The First Black President Who Could Really Change Everything I Mean Wow. It's not even the wondrous oratory power or the charisma or the sweet sense of deeper change overlaid with all kinds of sparkly utopian futuriffic goodness. There is, I think, something more. Something richer. And it's rather startling....

Imagine a world with more sexually open, sensual, happily libidinous politicians. Wait, can you? I want a smart, slutty senator. I want an effective, confident, sex-positive congressman or woman who, if asked, speaks openly and blamelessly and even happily about her proclivities, with a wink and a smile and maybe a bit of cleavage before Labor Day. Married, single, somewhere in between? Doesn't matter. And, dare I say it, I want president who not only freely discusses and shrugs off his or her loves and sexual desires and even affairs, but dares to enjoy sex and thrives because of it...

Bored with the 'war' on Iraq? 4,000 dead merely induce shrugging? Need an incentive to keep caring? It is a time for a radical rethinking. It is a time to reconsider it all, to perhaps reassess how we are presenting and digesting America's most costly and lost and unwinnable and brutal and ignoble and inept and insidious and depressing war that's not really a war; it's time to revolutionize how it's all packaged and broadcast and pumped like hot sticky misery into the heavily narcotized American cultural bloodstream because, oh my God, we are sick sick sick of it all,...

Schools? Health care? As if. Your taxes pay for brutality and Wall St. bailouts. Feel better? Just so we have this straight: You are not paying taxes merely to fund torture and bomb-dropping and the killing of countless innocents in Iraq in a futile and lost war that's not really a war and is far more of a massive fiscal, tactical and moral failure which will end up costing the nation an estimated $3 trillion, burn through any remaining sense of national dignity and leave repercussions that will last for generations. Ha. You should be so lucky. Because your tax...

Could the Olympics rain down shame on Chinese oppression and Tibet abuses? Let's hope. I hope it all comes crashing down on their heads. Is that wrong? Is it ill-minded and somehow unfair to wish that the Chinese government's notorious record of human rights abuses and absolutely horrid treatment of Tibet be exposed to the world — and the Chinese people themselves — to the point where it is shamed and humiliated and perhaps even forced by unprecedented international scrutiny to upheave its oppressive ways and improve conditions and even (heaven forfend) honor religious and political freedom within its borders?...

The Vatican unveils fresh new sins, as the world just rolls its eyes. Is your name on the list? This just in: If you're an obscenely wealthy drug-dealing pedophile stem-cell researcher who drives a Hummer and doesn't recycle, you are totally going to hell. Oh please, like you didn't already know. Hey, the Catholic Church wouldn't lie, mister. The Big Book o' Deadly Sins apparently has a whole new addendum and it looks like it ain't just gluttony and lust and murder and hot porn and witchcraft and coveting thy neighbor's way cool Flickr photo stream anymore. That stuff is...

Is it OK to switch religions, change denominations, even split from God entirely? Jesus says: Sure! This much we know: God is failing. Or more accurately, God is mutating. Changing. In flux. Becoming perhaps slightly less appealing as a dogmatic force of rigid closed-minded sit-down-and-shut-up paternal scowling and becoming perhaps more fluid, interesting, dynamic, unspecified, something you actually want to take into your heart and into your mouth and lick until you find the rich, creamy center and then define that taste for yourself, blissfully independent of what your parents or priest or president tells you, until you reach that...

Right now, deep in the GOP dungeons, they're planning their racist, disgraceful assault. Whatever will it be? There's no true genius hate artist like Karl Rove around anymore to attempt to unify the racists and the white evangelicals and the Latinos and the war-lovers into one giant, seething, Obama-fearing voting bloc. Which might be impossible, but given the deeply fractured nature of the conservative wing, it might be McCain's only hope. . The name thing is just too damn easy. Childish, sophomoric, a given. Of course, this doesn't mean they won't use it. A lot. I mean, my God, his...

Fidel Castro slumps away, Bush races to history's dungheap, and 13 million TVs prepare to die. Are you ready? You know what we don't really get enough of in American culture? Change. No, not the bland politicalspeak Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton brand of broad sloganeering bumper-sticker change, the kind where part of your naive perky innocent unicorns-in-the-sky self really wants to believe it's all going to be hopeful and good and radically different, but yet you kind of know, deep down, when you peel back the masks and the rhetoric and the spin, that when all is said and done, pretty...

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel ... like buying a new iPod and a boat - I have perhaps greatly misunderestimated the Bush administration. It's true. I have, lo these past 7.3 miserable and karmically bitch-slapped years, perhaps not clearly appreciated their ruthless and demeaning but perhaps rather insanely effective (well, sort of) economic plan for America. Or rather, 'Murka. Because it's clearly an stroke of nefarious genius, a wickedly underhanded economic strategy to induce such levels of pain and depression and misery across the nation, to load us up on war and...

Love means never accidentally running over her cat with a lawnmower. Also, avoid these - I am, as always, here to help. This Valentine's Day, be sure to avoid these highly unpleasant gifts. Hey, you want to find love and have sex, right? I mean, someday? OK then. 1) Copy of $3.1 trillion Bush budget. Do not tell that special someone you love them by gutting arts funding in schools, mental health services, Medicare and Medicaid and programs that bring low-income kids to Washington as you create record deficits and humiliate the nation once again, all in an effort to...

Dead soldiers, peak oil and mind-boggling profits; praise Jesus, the machine's still working - Surprisingly moving Barack Obama music videos? The potential end of the writer's strike? Cute young deer being saved by helicopters? No no no no no. Here are your most deeply inspiring news stories of the month: A flurry of pink slips fluttered over the job sector as corporate payrolls were sliced like sour pie. Foreclosures are skyrocketing and new home sales across the nation are plummeting faster than Britney Spears' serotonin levels. A nasty recession is either creeping or flooding in, depending on your perspective and...

Yes, you already knew. But now they're actually quantifiable. Like, say, stab wounds - Oh sweet Jesus, someone actually counted. Two independent nonprofit journalism groups apparently took enough laudanum and beat down whatever healthy sense of human decency they had in order to plunge straight into that quivering mountain of incompetence that is the official record of the Bush administration, all the false quotes and all the lie-strewn press conferences and all the squinty-eyed fabrications from Dubya, Colin Powell, Condi and Cheney and Rummy et al, that took place in the two years after September 11, 2001, and added them...

Yes, it's all doom and gloom and war and global warming and Bush. Except when it's not - Happiness knows no particular order, and neither does this list: 1) We may very well, within a year's time, have a black president. We may have a female president. We may, unfortunately, also have a bizarre robotic nutball Mormon president. No matter how it turns out, it will be very strange and unnerving and different and a bit startling and therefore at least remotely interesting to watch. Which, you have to admit, is far better than how it's been for the past...

Weak, gutless Democrats, sneering, oil-loving Republicans and cars that belch and shrug - As part of my ongoing effort to save my own soul and avoid repeatedly stabbing myself in the eye with a fork in screaming frustration, and also because it's Beltway politics and watching it too closely is akin to having your cerebral cortex raped by encephalitic trolls, I've only paid cursory attention to the massive, landmark energy bill that's right now passing like a painful gallstone through Congress and getting snagged here and gutted there and stripped of key provisions over here, all so Dubya won't veto...

Need something a bit more, you know, sexy and subversive this holiday? Here you go - No fruit baskets. No swell digital cameras and no "Sopranos" DVD sets and no noxious copies of "High School Musical 2" and no "Eat, Pray, Love" and nothing at all approved or endorsed by Oprah. No golfing figurines. No sports paraphernalia. No candleholders. No pink fleece hoodies with little glittery skulls. Not on this, my annual list, anyway. Just random delicious deeply cool things I've come across that make a statement or warm your blood or taste unreal or that serve some sort of...

Remember kids: Be good, say your prayers and, uh, never be alone with a priest. Praise! This is how you know. This is one more of the beautiful bizarre myriad ways the Great Shift signals its imminent arrival, in fits and spurts and wayward sidelong slaps, weird cultural burps and from unexpected places that make you go, wow. Take the Archdiocese of New York. It has apparently just released new coloring book for kids, all about how to be safe in an age of fear and predation. It is full of nice pictures of kids being sweet and virginal and...

Note to radical Muslims: I've now named my favorite coffee mug 'Muhammad.' Hope that helps -Here's what I like to do every time I see a throng of frothing religious zombies marching in the streets of Sudan or Pakistan or Colorado Springs or anywhere else in the world, carrying knives and torches and holding festering clots of fear in their hearts as they burn flags or photographs or copies of "The Goblet of Fire" or "The Golden Compass" or that sweet little book about the cute gay penguins in the Central Park Zoo and all screaming for the instant death...

Shrill Bible-thumpers boycott 'The Golden Compass'; world's children grin devilishly -It has become some sort of rule, some sort of perfectly delicious law of the popular culture upon which any open-minded and attuned and humor-licked and spiritually aware and intellectually curious and sexually alive human worth her moist, wine-massaged soul can now rely with utter and perfect clarity. . . .

America's most obscene shopping day meets its doom in an oily nightmare hell. All true! Is this why they hate us? Why we hate ourselves? Is this why we seem to have no real idea who the hell we are anymore, or what it means to have a humane and thoughtful national identity, and therefore we happily scratch and claw and fight our way into giant fluorescent-lit hellpits for a chance at a $29 DVD player and some crappy plasma TVs and a pallet of heavily discounted spatulas? More broadly: Is this why we're suffering such a general feeling of...

It's official: Less than one year until history slaps Dubya to the curb. Can you feel the tingle? It's just that kind of feeling, that sense of hesitant, embryonic optimism, the sense that says, oh my God, we as a culture and a smash-mouthed, war-hammered society really are fast approaching something possibly, potentially, heart-achingly new and different and — because it cannot get any worse — just a little bit better. Here is my suggestion: Mark your calendars, set your watch, program a celebratory ringtone well in advance, because the countdown has officially begun. It is now less than one...

Are you sick of being sick? Suffering way too much Bush-induced nausea? Well, tough -- I know how it is. You've had it up to here. There are only so many stories about blood and death and pain you can take, only so many times you can hear about random shootings and corporate malfeasance and how BushCo's squad of scabrous flying monkeys have, say, supported torture or endorsed wiretapping or gouged the nation for another $200 billion to pay for a failed war. Your nerves are raw and your heart is tired and the media will just not shut the...

Behold, the most dangerous issue facing modern faith: Its inability to evolve, nakedly - It's a topic that jumped up like a stunned ferret from God's own hot plate three separate times recently — indicating, I think, that I'd better pay some sort of attention to it — the topic being the obvious but still desperately under-discussed idea that perhaps the most dangerous problem facing man in this modern age of radical technology and dazzling scientific conundrum and otherworldly raspberry vodka and ever-expanding notions of love and sex and human interconnection is the sad and treacherous fact that, well, religion...

Bloody nation cheers 4th straight title. Afghanistan sulks. "I'm speechlost!" sniffled Bush -- Hot on the heels of Time magazine naming the Apple iPhone "Invention of the Year" and just as many newspapers, blogs and TV programs prepare to unleash their various "Top 10" and "Best Of" lists for 2007, comes the news that you, your ravaged and saddened heart, and the world at large have all just awarded George W. Bush's disastrous, embarrassing, profoundly disgusting occupation of Iraq "War of the Year," for the fourth consecutive year.

Go ahead, roll in it. Revel in it. You're made of it. What, you prefer a meek, sterile world? I'm 2 or 3 years old. I'm out in the backyard playing in the grass and my dad is just over there, working in the garden, planting tomatoes or carrots or human shrunken heads or God knows what because how the hell should I know, I'm only 3. Like any self-respecting child, I like to dig in the dirt with my bare hands, probe, investigate the planet I currently cruise so close to. It pays off nicely. I eventually find real...

To hell with the FBI's million-strong Terrorist Watch List. Here is your killer alternative -- Somewhere deep in the bowels of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center which is naturally connected by a series of secret, rotting, subterranean vacuum tunnels to the National Security Agency and the Homeland Security Department and Dick Cheney's nipple-torture fetish room, is a vicious little computer bank running an encephalitic version of Microsoft Vista that's right now churning through some sort of satanic algorithm designed to mine enormous piles of chaotic data from a million unreliable global sources, all in an effort to add tens of...

Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history - I have this ongoing discussion with a longtime reader who also just so happens to be a longtime Oakland high school teacher, a wonderful guy who's seen generations of teens come and generations go and who has a delightful poetic sensibility and quirky outlook on his life and his family and his beloved teaching career. And he often writes to me in response to something I might've written about the youth of today, anything where I comment on the various nefarious factors shaping their...

Does the extremism of some progressives spell danger to delicious evolution? Well, yes. I hear it nearly every week in response to nearly any column that has anything to do with me daring to say I appreciate or admire or moderately wish to commend some sort of progressive movement or corporation or product, one that appears to be creating some sort of good in the world, moving things forward or upending the status quo or infuriating the religious right and making you think/shop/screw anew. I get the e-mails. And there is, by and large, a general outpouring of agreement, understanding,...