Respect Authority

Major developments are in the air. In previews for tonight’s season finale of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, there’s a fight! A big ole Jersey-style screaming match that I’m really hoping devolves into arguments over whose jeans are the most stone-washed and maybe the pulling of some big-ass hair. But in the meantime, until the lovely hour of 10 p.m. Eastern Time rolls around, we’ll have to amuse ourselves with actual news. Well, “actual.”

FOLLOWING THE TREND set forth by Al Gore, John Kerry has apparently asked the Senate ethics panel if he can use $300,000 from his (pointless) campaign funds to invest in a documentary about injured Iraq war veterans. Because “documentary filmmaker” is apparently every presidential hopeful’s second choice of career.

SPEAKING OF PRESIDENTIAL hopefuls, everything about this headline struck me as wrong. Not only should John McCain probably not be driving (at least not without Solar Shield sunglasses) but he definitely shouldn’t be tweeting. Luckily, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” is less than 140 characters.

PROCTER & GAMBLE’S TAMPAX is reportedly behind a new series of viral videos about a boy who wakes up one morning to find his “boy parts” are gone, replaced by lady ones. …No commentary necessary.

A&E FINALLY CANCELED Patrick Swayze crime show The Beast. I’m more upset that I can’t in good conscience make fun of the show’s cancellation than that it was actually canceled.

IN A HOPELESS case of short-sighted thinking, the Detroit City Council is expected to consider a crackdown that would ban alcohol at clubs that offer topless dancing. Because if there’s one thing more depressing than watching topless dancing at a strip club in Detroit, it’s doing it sober.

And so it begins. The summer of no news. The economy, while still slowly imploding in on itself, seems to have moved away from the rapid freefall into global depression that seemed so unavoidable just a few short months ago. We have a black, progressive, intelligent president — who knows almost as many big words as Bush made up on his own.

And swine flu — which for a brief 15 minutes of porcine fame threatened to upend our sudden post-Obama euphoria — has already faded: This week Mexico City lowered its swine flu alert level from yellow to green, saying there have been no new infections for a week. (This is to say nothing of other Mexico City alert levels, related to things like “drug-related violence,” “irreversible pollution” or “gang warfare,” all of which remain at a rather permanent state of red). 

What is there left to do when dinosaur-caliber mountains of shit aren’t perpetually hitting an industrial-sized fan? Twiddle our thumbs? Pick our noses? Watch an inordinate amount of reality television? 

Bring on the next global crisis; I’m bored.

Who cares?

My how the tables have turned. Turns out, there won’t be any money left by the time he retires… serves the old bastard right.

In any event, I’ve long given up hope that ancient social safety nets would still be around when I’m inconceivably old, but I guess 32 is creeping up on me faster than I thought. That being said, here’s a long overdue guide to Millennial retirement:

Get really rich and “work” until you’re 90

Think about it, retirement age billionaires like Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, and Warren Buffet have nothing to worry about! They’re not only still vigorously working but also outrageously rich and successful. Their brilliant retirement plan is to get into a position of power and rot while taking in a fat paycheck. What’s more, running a business into your twilight years also guards against the more subtle pains of retirement. People are both forced to listen to you and have to pretend they care — solving classic old people concerns.

Invest in Rich Old People ASAP

Without talent or intellect, the first option is easier said than done. However, if you have looks — you can invest in your future by marrying dying rich people today. A riskier investment strategy is stripping. It worked, sort of, for Anna Nicole and scores of other young women however the quality of billionaires who marry whores is spotty at best. A more conservative and gender-blind approach is to earn a degree with the University of Phoenix and apply for Administrative Assistant positions at major Fortune-500 firms. Dress conservatively with a hint of slut and wait for a return on your investment.

Live Fast, Die Young

Of course, society must prepare for those citizens who haven’t prepared themselves. This is why Social Security was invented in the first place — to bail out the assholes who just had to live paycheck to measly paycheck while supporting dozens of kids.

Therefore, our society has to be just as forward thinking as our grandparents’. Luckily we currently offer endless ways to slowly kill yourself and market them to the lowest common denominators in society. Chances are, if you’re eating McDonalds and KFC more than three times a week, playing Wii instead of actually exercising and watching American Idol instead of reading — you probably don’t have health insurance which means you’ll probably die before you can retire. Coupled with drugs, alcohol and deadly diseases you can only really catch if you’re an idiot — many of us will never have to sully our beautiful little minds with plans for retiring after 65.

A revolution has transpired in America, and nobody even knew it was happening until it was too late.

Financial Supervillain Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke scares the shit out of me, and if he doesn’t have the same effect on you then you’re taking too many Percocets. After all, he’s the type of guy that sits high in an armored fortress, rubbing his knuckles, and laughing maniacally at the misfortune of commoners every morning before his daily lap around his pool filled with gold coins. And who gave him the gold coins? Our government, of course, and they took them from us. But how could such a thing happen? What ever happened to checks and balances? What ever happened to democracy?

Well, the Federal Reserve happened, fellow peasants. See, democracy is a form of government in which state-power is held by the majority of citizens within a country. And one of the core principles of democracy is that all members of the society have equal access to power, which… um… isn’t true, like at all, in America. Read More ›

Time’s cover story this week is about Obama and his magical hundred days, and the story’s already online. The short end of it? He really hasn’t done anything yet, and even if he did it’s really Jim Jones’ fault for being too weak; besides, he shot the pirates. What’s more interesting is this picture of his private residence! Looks like his Mac’s hooked up to a brand new Apple Cinema Display with a custom high-resolution White House wallpaper.

And he might be using his Blackberry while reading four books at the same time. Also, his lamp’s a little fey.

Well I never!

First they taunt us with ironically entertaining but completely brainwashing D.A.R.E sessions, then they infiltrate our televisions with endless public service announcements. They even put a damper on our ability to drive through a McDonald’s high without double-checking for pigtail-wearing girls on tricycles. And I hate doing that! 

And now, of all the things, they’re trying to steal our day. Indeed, some anti-drug advocates are using April 20 — according to the Wall Street Journal, a day when “marijuana smokers around the country light up for an unofficial holiday celebrating pot that stems from smoker slang ‘420;’ thank you WSJ, bastion of all that is hip and knowing — to start a movement against pot that cites not only health and legal reasons, but moral ones. American pot smokers, the North Coastal Prevention Coalition claims, are unwittingly supporting drug cartels in Mexico. 

Five years ago, this sort of holier-than-thou attitude would have gotten any coalition a series of puzzled looks. “What’s a cartel? What’s Mexico?” but these days it’s become increasingly difficult to ignore story after story on the escalating violence across the border, the vast majority of it stemming from Mexico’s biggest industry: las drogas. Read More ›

In the interest of national security, President Obama isn’t allowed to have a Respect Authority account and therefore will post infrequent updates from his friends’ accounts.

From the snowy peaks of the Catskill Mountains to the temperate zone of Orange County, we have crisscrossed this great nation for about two months, charged with the people’s work of hope and change.

To be honest, Air Force One is great and all but the workload, stress levels and tension headaches are getting pretty annoying pretty fast. Sixty days ago, I thought I had this. I said to myself, “Barack, you’re a young, smart guy with a slightly larger than average penis — you got this.” But now I’m not so sure.

For example, last week I was on the Tonight Show. Sure, the venue was a bit unusual if not unbecoming of the office, but I was just trying to keep things light, especially appealing in the face of, oh well I dunno, something like a depression. And so there I am, with Jay, and I accidentally make a retard joke. Fuck my life. Read More ›

Yes, he is.

While, I’ve long lost interest in America’s Death Spiral (I’m busy plotting the comeback!) Krugman’s latest blooooog entry annoyed me enough to care again.

The Geithner plan has now been leaked in detail. It’s exactly the plan that was widely analyzed — and found wanting — a couple of weeks ago. The zombie ideas have won.

Zombie ideas? Really? You’re a fucking Noble laureate Paul Krugman. Aren’t you beyond awkward fitting analogies? Aren’t we, as a people, beyond alarmist propaganda? You have no idea how to fix the economy, no one does, and your pseudo-intellectual doom-saying doesn’t address the problem at hand.

Maybe Geither’s plan to save the world is like pumping gallons of seawater into my California roll (oh my, that’s fun) but I believe in happy endings. In my worldview, when the handsome lead desperately pumps the chest of a decidedly drowned love interest — just when it seems certain they’re dead — the beautiful maiden finally coughs up water and is ready to make out. America’s waiting for her Zac Efron, Paul Krugman… get on board.

[The Conscience of a Liberal - NYTimes.com]

If you’re anything like me, you spent the past weekend wallowing on the couch amid forlorn take-out wrappers and empty beer bottles, wondering how you managed to pass that whole ‘college’ thing with flying colors and still get fucked out of job security.

So with that level of unabashed optimism in mind, let’s take a look at some of the shit that didn’t hit the fan over the last six months. Hell, shit that maybe even rearranged itself on the ground in a way that one might consider borderline appealing: a little bean-bag of shit into which we can nestle ourselves and pray that everything gets better, soon. 

1. Quiznos and Subway, long foes in the world of toasted and non-toasted lunch fare, upped the ante on their price battle in the last few months. The result: Quizno’s, long the better-tasting option—and with a distinctly less depressing in-store environment—now offers $4 foot-long subs. 

2. Teenagers everywhere are preparing to lazily indulge in a summer of video games and Kool-Aid, since their parents have long since stopped expecting them to get out and find “one of those so-called ‘job’ thingies.”

3. The mainstream media, ever the pre-recession purveyor of breaking news like “Britney Spears: Still Crazy!” is finally reporting on things that matter – like economics, politics, war and Chris Brown. 

4. With pretty much the entire country desperate for a new source of income, people (read: politicians) have started looking a tad more favorably on one-time nemesis of morality: marijuana. We may soon be forking over tax dollars for the right to smoke up (conveniently and legally), but at least we’ll be forking them over at CVS.

5. Starbucks has revealed the first chinks in its armor, belying that perhaps it is not the global superpower we had always assumed. McDonalds, on the other hand, definitely is.

6. The recession is environmentally friendly: getting your electricity turned off is kind of like unintentionally going green.

7. People are finally enraged over the proliferation of mothers with more than five children, specifically those who subsist on the hard-earned tax dollars of those of us not choosing to get knocked up every six minutes.

8. Staying home and drinking alone is now frugal, instead of pathetic.

9. More strippers.

10. [Given tight resources, all RA Top Ten Lists have been reduced to nine items. Ignoring that this is our first and only top-ten list to date, simply assume the repercussions will be both widespread and difficult to bear.]

Boy, oh boy. This documentary sure has a case of the Mondays.

The best kind of conspiracy theories are the ones that aren’t particularly biased — they don’t side with a liberal or conservative audience, rather working under the ideology that we are all fucked. And when you hate everyone, it’s a lot easier to feel like you’re always right, which is, obviously, awesome.

Anyway, those now iconic Shepard Fairey portraits of Obama are reminiscent of Soviet propaganda not only in their aesthetic, but also in the fact that they, um, are propaganda. And they worked — regardless of whether or not Obama truly does have a benevolent agenda. I don’t know if Obama is evil, or if all the world leaders are evil, but I do know that sometimes it definitely does look like that. However, take the documentary as it is; considering ominous, suspenseful music is generally not included as an objective standard in documentary film making, it’s probably best to remain skeptical and put the feeding tube down for a few while you watch this.

What’s almost more interesting than all the status quo shattering conspiracy theories, ad hominem attacks, and super credible commentary by the likes of famed political analyst KRS-One, is the speed with which this 2-hour documentary was produced, with plenty of factual evidence to argue their points stuffed in the cracks between all the crazies. Fahrenheit 9/11 took years of production, meanwhile, The Obama Deception came out before Obama himself has even gotten a chance to use every bathroom in the White House.

Here in Americker, it’s easy to find yourself disillusioned with the political process. Really, what could be more intellectually stimulating than watching talking heads bicker over whether or not Rush Limbaugh really is the voice of the GOP or if he’s only kind of the voice of the GOP? And personally, I can’t tell you a project I’m more excited about than keeping a strict tally of every single campaign promise Obama inevitably breaks. Man, I can’t wait until we send him back to Mexico with all the rest of his evil Muslim friends.

Now, lest any frustrated citizens in other countries feel left out from the high-school-league He Said, She Said America’s beautiful democracy depends on, fortunately, policy-makers the world over are just as retarded as the Nascar-loving, creationism-touting greed factories we have running the good ol’ US of A. Here are some obscure laws from around the world that will fill your heart with warmth and keep you from ever mistaking that we live in times even resembling “progressive.” Read More ›

Despite a head cold that’s made it near-impossible for me to enjoy my favorite herbal refreshment, I managed to tune in - soberly - for President Barack Obama’s speech to the nation yesterday evening. 

The spiel, which included any number of morale boosters and both long- and short-term promises, instilled in me that same national pride afforded by any of the president’s statements. That said, I find myself a little speech-weary these days. Show me an inspiratial Obama speech and I’ll show you a country that’s still totally fucked. 

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t lost faith. Rather I’m simply concerned, like any American who’s started to see the effects of the recession. And for the first time since he became a public figure, Obama was just a little less adept at hiding his own concern. 

After months of touting a progressive effort to look forward instead of back, the president was throwin’ bows last night, sniping about the deficit he inherited, the war his predecessor mismanaged, and the economy decades of past presidents, executives and regulators let grow exponentially on the back of fabricated money. He also outlined, rather frankly, some of the most impressive failings in America today: if you drop out of high school, you’re a loser. If you bought or are buying a home ludicrously out of your price range, you are a loser. And if you decide to redecorate your office in the midst of a recession your very company helped create (I’m looking at you John Thain), you too are a loser. 

Luckily for Obama, and in a “kicked while they’re down” scenario for Republicans everywhere, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s GOP response was nothing if not awkward, ill-prepared and 75% off topic. The speech, which Gawker phenomenally pegged as a real-life incarnation of 30 Rock’s hillbilly/aid Kenneth - included gems like “as a child, I remember going to the grocery store with my dad,” and some weird metaphor involving volcanoes. Moreover, although Jindal can hardly be blamed for Hurricane Katrina, he made a mistake in alluding to Louisiana as a model for fiscal and governmental success: New Orleans is basically Sodom and Gomorrah these days. By the end of Jindal’s clip, I was ready to spend another $740 bajillion just to get him off screen. 

Barack Obama has always wanted to, and promised to, make us a country full of winners. We should be at the forefront of new industries and technology, without sacrificing national integrity in the interest of a bottom line. But last night was the first time I got a whiff of impatience from the poised president: before we can be a nation of winners, we have to undo the mistakes of quite a few losers.