I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.
“You must really be a glutton for punishment,” he said.
“A gourmet, actually,” I said. “If it isn’t perfect, I send it back.”
Frankly, one of our political parties is insane, and we all know which one it is. They have descended from the realm of reasonableness that was the mark of conservatism. They dream of anarchy, of ending government.
My fellow Americans —
I’ll tell you who’s insane: anyone who’s not dreaming of anarchy at this moment in history is insane. People forget that this great nation was founded by anarchists, born out of an armed revolution against a corrupt government.
As I said at the time, “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”
I assure you, though, that regrettably neither current political party dreams of anarchy. They both dream of exactly the same things: self-aggrandizement and rewarding their most powerful supporters with political spoils.
The well-known liberal cartoonist Ted Rall wrote a book a couple of years ago advocating a new American revolution. Unfortunately, while popular uprisings do continue to occur around the world, I am not optimistic that it will ever happen again in America.
The great majority of our citizens now are far more informed about fantasy football and reality TV than they are about current events. They understand politics at only the most simple-minded level: Team Red vs. Team Blue.
I’m Team Blue! Let’s go, Blue! BOOOOO, Team Red! Or vice versa.
Notice, for example, that all of the things that Team Blue hated so much about the George W. Bush administration are okay now that they’re being carried out by President Obama.
Obama didn’t stop the wars or the torture or the spying. He’s just as cozy with Wall Street. Gitmo is still open for “prolonged detention.” Moreover, he’s killing foreign civilians, and sometimes American citizens, with drone strikes, and he’s eliminating whatever civil liberties you think you have left.
Torture and war and economic collapse don’t matter as long as they’re being supervised by my team! Go Blue! We’ll all be in a gulag in 10 years. Go Blue!
Some despotic regimes around the world rely on starvation and threats of violence to keep the people in a state of submissive compliance. Here in America, the same collective stupor is effected via mindless entertainments and gadgetry.
I should raise myself out of depression, paralysis and failure and resist this massive government/corporate dystopia — but I might miss my TV programs.
In 1776, we decided that being Americans meant being free men and women, not serfs and lackeys. We mutually pledged to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor to throw off the abuses and usurpations of the Government, and to secure the blessings of Liberty.
How soon they forget.
I bid you God speed,
Thomas Jefferson, anarchist
Obama dogged by protesters on bay visit — SFGate
Dogged by protesters?! If he ever comes to Orange County, he’ll be PROTESTED BY DOGS!
My owner pays so many taxes that there’s hardly any money left for pug treats! 🙁
— Lightning 
A commercial for Cox Communications comes on the TV, the gist of which is that no one knows what the young woman in the ad likes. A sushi chef, for example, serves her an oddball concoction that she doesn’t like, and I forget the rest, but you get the idea.
“But here at Cox,” the ad goes on to say, “we know what you like.”
I say, “She likes Cox.”
My kid gives me a look.
“C-O-X. Cox. Come on, man.”
I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I’m dead. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]
The Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles had a telescope pointed at Saturn this week. Anyone who wanted to could stop by and have a look.
“It looks like I thought it would look,” one observer remarked.
HA! He wasn’t impressed AT ALL by the fact that better men than himself built a device that lets him see things a BILLION miles away.
This same idiot later pronounced himself “blown away” by the deaths of several make-believe characters on a TV show called Game of Thrones.
If your Facebook and Twitter feeds look anything like mine this morning, you know that unfortunately this is just one idiot out of many.
One of the reasons America is circling the drain is people’s inability to distinguish fantasy from reality until reality hits them like a pitchfork in the guts. Which it eventually does 
.
See you in Hell . . .
I wish more people staring at cell phones while walking would fall into holes . . .
Well buddy when I die throw my body in the back
And drive me to the junkyard in my Cadillac
Say goodbye to that $500 deductible insurance plan and the $20 co-payment for a doctor’s office visit. They are likely to become luxuries of the past. . . .
Then blame — or credit — the so-called Cadillac tax, which penalizes companies that offer high-end health care plans to their employees.
You’re probably thinking: “So what? I don’t have a high-end health care plan. I’m a working stiff. Let the Wall Street fat cats pay their Cadillac tax.”
Actually, because the plan cost that triggers the Cadillac tax is not indexed for inflation, Bradley Herring, a health economist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, estimates that as many as 75 percent of plans could be affected by the tax over the next decade.
The hospital where Abbey Bruce, a nursing assistant in Olympia, Wash., worked, for example, stopped offering the traditional plan that she and her husband, Casey, who has cystic fibrosis, had chosen. . . .
She has had to drop out of school and take on additional jobs to pay for her husband’s medicine.
“My husband didn’t choose to be born this way,” Ms. Bruce said. The union representing her, a chapter of the Service Employees International Union, has objected to the changes. Her employer, Providence Health & Services, says it designed the plans to avoid having employees shoulder too much in medical bills and has reduced how much workers pay in premiums.
ObamaCare proponents say the Cadillac tax is bringing down employer (not patient) costs as planned.
Cynthia Weidner, an executive at the benefits consultant HighRoads, [said] that the tax appeared to be having the intended effect. “The premise it’s built upon is happening,” she said, adding, “the consumer should continue to expect that their plan is going to be more expensive, and they will have less benefits.”
Key takeaway: Pay more. Get less.
I hate to say I told you so, so instead I’ll say say an insincere thank you to Obama and all the delusional fuckers who voted for this goddamn law.
Paul Boag: Do users care about your latest news? (Spoiler: No.)
Robbie Rogers, on in the 77th minute, makes American sports history as the first openly gay male athlete in a major U.S. sport.
This came as shocking news to me . . . not the gay aspect, but the fact that someone considers soccer a major U.S. sport . . .
The Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors Wednesday approved newly hired LSU offensive coordinator Cam Cameron’s three-year contract but not without faculty members voicing concerns. According to the terms, Cameron will receive $600,000 for the 2013 season, followed by $1.3 million and $1.5 million in the last two years of his contract.
LSU has faculty?!
Donald McKinney, director of wind ensembles and conducting and associate professor in the school of music, said he was “disheartened” in LSU’s handling of the future. He said the morale has been low and hopes LSU would change to retain faculty. McKinney, who’s a newer faculty member, said he’s heading to another university at the end of the semester. . . .
Nathan Crick, an associate professor in communication studies, echoed similar sentiments. Crick said he was sold false goods and now “it’s time to return them.” The professor said he’s leaving LSU for Texas A&M.
GOOD RIDDANCE, YOU PUSSIES! Your departure frees up more money for football!
Newly appointed LSU President King Alexander said he isn’t surprised of the issues in Louisiana because they are strikingly similar to California. Alexander is currently the president at California State University Long Beach but will take the lead at LSU beginning July 1.
King Alexander!? Well, President of LSU is quite a stepdown from King of Macedonia. He must be a big football fan.
Wait — what? Cal State Long Beach?! That place is a shithole. I guess it’s hard to find a guy who’d consider LSU an academic advancement.
God-DAMN I can’t wait for football season!
The best advice to reduce stress in your life is to stop screwing up . . .
here was an old woman tossed up in a basket,
Nineteen times as high as the moon;
Where she was going I couldn’t but ask it,
For in her hand she carried a broom.“Old woman, old woman, old woman,” quoth I,
“Oh whither, oh whither, oh whither so high?”
“To brush the cobwebs off the sky!”
“Shall I go with thee?”
“Aye, by-and-by.”
Take that, liberal heathen! She’s not “supposed” to pray in a school but she did it anyway! And that’s why she’s alive today!
It would be useful to know for the purpose of assessing the value of prayer as a tornado survival tactic, how many of the 24 people who didn’t survive the Oklahoma tornado were praying at the moment of their death.
Of the 10 children who were killed, were any of them praying? Maybe God said to himself, “Okay, change of plans. I was going to hit Rhonda Crosswhite with this tornado, but since she’s praying out loud in a school, I’ll redirect it into those 10 kids.”
In the desert, an old monk once advised a traveler, the voices of God and the Devil are scarcely distinguishable.
Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. — Joseph Addison
Hi, everybody! Here’s a picture of me taking a nap on my porch.
I know what you’re thinking: “Lightning, did you refinance to take advantage of the low interest rates?”
HAHA . . . I OWN THIS PLACE FREE AND CLEAR! IT’S PAID OFF!
— Lightning
