Palin says 17-year-old daughter is pregnant

ST. PAUL, Minn. — John McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin said Monday that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant, an announcement aimed at rebutting Internet rumors that Palin’s youngest son, born in April, was actually her daughter’s.

A statement released by the campaign said that Bristol Palin will keep her baby and marry the child’s father. Bristol Palin is five months pregnant, and the baby is due in late December.

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents,” Sarah and Todd Palin said in the brief statement.

“Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family,” they added.

Sarah Palin’s son Trig was born in April with Down syndrome. Internet bloggers have been suggesting that the child was actually born to Bristol Palin but that her mother, the Alaska governor, claimed to be the mother.

McCain adviser Mark Salter said the campaign announced the daughter’s pregnancy to rebut those rumors.

Senior McCain advisers said the Arizona senator and his top aides had known about Bristol’s pregnancy before offering Palin the No. 2 spot on the GOP ticket.

“Senator McCain’s view is this is a private family matter. As parents, (the Palins) love their daughter unconditionally and are going to support their daughter,” said McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt.

Said Schmidt: “Life happens.”

So there you have it.  It’s perfectly ok to have sex outside of wedlock (so much for that abstinence platform, eh?) but you gotta keep the baby if you do.

Who is does Bristol think she is?  Jamie Lynn Spears?

Discuss.

So one of the hens from The View, Sherri Shepherd, decided to make a funny:

She also tells the mag that that it is hard being ‘taken to task about her faith’ on The View:

“Oh sometimes I say, ‘Lord, Juanita Bynum or Joyce Myers (evangelists) would be so good at this table. They could lay hands on Barbara Walters and get her saved. I ask the Lord, ‘Why am I here?’ I have to trust God when He says, ‘Because I said so.’”

Ok. This isn’t a joke. This is an actual, motherphucking, huge-ass, gorilla of a problem.

Why do, “Christians” feel audacious enough that they think they can lead someone to being, “saved?” Furthermore, why do, “Christians” feel like people should be saved? Maybe we don’t want to? Have you ever thought about that, folks?

At first, I was seething because Barbara Walters is a Jewess, like me. Living in The Bible Belt/The South, I hear this shit incessantly. People thinking they mean well but they, ultimately, don’t. They’re just being narrow minded, self-absorbed, selfish and disrespectful.

So disrespectful that a former colleague of mine actually took me out to lunch to address my life of sin. All because she was worried about me. Note: SHE was worried. SHE. It was all about HER. Not me. Not my beliefs. No respect for me - at all. The fact that I’m a Jewess and refuse to accept (let alone acknowledge) Christ as my savior had been keeping her up at night and that just won’t do!

Sherri Shepherd was not joking. She does believe this shit. Any attempt to spin this story any other way is merely that - a feeble attempt to hide her blantant arrogance.

And to her other comment about the bazillions of abortions she had: it’s a good thing. We don’t need the stupid and the arrogant procreating.

Moar abortions and less fundies, kplzthnx!

July 4, 2008 was a great day for America- it was the day we were finally rid of the cancer known as Jesse Helms. Helms was an evil, racist man who repeatedly tried to send our nation back to the dark ages with his hypocritical mix of professed christianity, support for big business, and hatred/fear of anyone who wasn’t white and heterosexual. The modern Neocon movement has its beginnings with Helms’ early understanding that scared, angry white men vote in droves.

To give the devil his due, Helms was one of the most effective operators in 20th century American politics. He (along with fellow racist Strom Thurmond) brought the south out of it’s antebellum political rut and helped found the Republican juggernaut that rapes our land today. Helms was in the first wave of politicians that revived the Republican party in the south with a molotov coctail of religion, racism, and good ol’ boy populism.  “White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories?” read a 1950 ad Helms worked on for Senator  Willis Smith.  He also famously referred to the 1964 Civil Rights Act as “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress”.

In 1972,  Helms became the first Republican Senator from North Carolina of the 20th century. Four years later he backed Ronald Reagan in the state’s presidential primary, handing Reagan’s lost cause campaign a victory that revived him enough to pose a serious challenge to  Gerald Ford at the Republican convention that year. Reagan lost the primary, but was positioned to take the party’s nomination in 1980- something that would have been impossible without the 1976 win in North Carolina.

Helms was savvy enough to know that fear and divisiveness alone don’t ensure victory at the polls, so he often resorted to old-fashioned cheating.  Helms’ North Carolina Congressional Club was repeatedly fined by the Federal Election Commission for illegally financing his campaigns. In 1992, the Helms campaign itself was penalized by the FEC for for mailing postcards to 125,000 black voters, threatening them with jail if they tried to exercise their right to vote.

For someone who professed such deep christianity, Helms racked up quite a reputation as a slumlord in Raleigh, even having separate management companies to handle his properties in the white and black sections of town.

It would be nice to believe that the death of Jesse Helms is symbolic of the decline of the politics of fear in our country- that maybe someday raising a boogyman (communists, blacks, muslims, gays, etc) won’t be enough to win elections or push agendas that go against the interests of average, working Americans.

I guess we’ll see in November.

So I quit tobacco on the 16th of June.  One slip on the 22nd consisting of two cigarettes.  Since then, it’s been me, the patch and a lot of whining.

“They” say (and, “they” are always right) that the longer you go, the less frequent but the more severe the cravings are.  I have found this, in my previous attempts, to be completely true.  As it stands right now, I’m sitting at my desk, watching the clock.  “They” say massive cravings only last a few moments.  The on-set of my demon begin at 10.53.

Since that time, I have taken a walk around the parking lot, gobbled an anti-anxiety tablet, joined an internet forum for folks who are in the same boat, shed a tear and squeezed a coffee cup.  I’m still feeling like absolute hell.  If there were a small animal around, I should certain run over it with a car.

My rationale for quitting smoking is basic common sense.  While I loved my sole vice more than anything, working in healthcare has shown me exactly what is going to happen to my body if I continue.  It sucks.  It sucks having one vice and having to give up said vice.

I started thinking about substance abuse and withdrawal, in general.  Funny that you can enter rehab for alcohol, drugs, compulsive behaviours, etc… but there is no, “rehab” for us nicotine addicts.  We have to go it alone, through every day life, with every day pressures.  We have to suck it up.  There is no safe place for us to dry out and get the shit out of our system.  I wonder why that is?

If you haven’t noticed, I have been very quiet on the internets as of late.  Work has kept me quite occupied.  But, I have found a way to keep my mind active while not at work.  I have substituted my addiction for nicotine with a video game.  For some odd reason, while playing a game, I find myself less inclined to want a cigarette.  My mind is so preoccupied with the game, it’s a little emotional and mental tranquility for me.

None the less, I do wish there was some sort of treatment facility I could go hide at for thirty days.  It would make the process so much easier.  So, so much easier.

And what’s with the Nicotine Anonymous meetings, anyhow?  I noticed my local chapter meets ONCE A WEEK.  WTF?  Not once a day.  Once a phucking week.  I was hoping for a program I could attend in the morning and the evening.  Nope.  Sundays only.

:sighs:

And thus ends my fragmented rant.

For now.

I’m off for a good crying jag.

I can add nothing else to add other than, “Thank you for your service to the field of journalism.” This is a loss for all.

A list of needs will be compiled and posted shortly.  If you have anything to spare or wish to donate a gift card to Target or WallyWorld, please let me know.

Many thanks!

You may not be familiar with his work, but Bo Diddley was a rock & roll pioneer on par with Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, and that cracker from Memphis who used to wear a white jumpsuit. It’s a shame that in an age when that dumbass from American Idol gets called a “rocker”, we’re losing the old guard when we need them more than ever.

About 15 years ago I was working for a PA company in Denver, and we got hired to do a 20th wedding anniversary party at the Jerome hotel in Aspen. The customer was a wealthy developer who wanted to show off how rich he was by throwing a lavish party- standard issue stuff. The talent included the Spinners and Bo Diddley.

There was a catered lunch for the crew, and as I sat down to eat Bo walked in, carrying his square guitar case. He’d just gotten in from the airport.

“Hey man, can I grab a sandwich?” he asked.

“Sure” I said, “but they’ve got a hospitality suite for you down the hall if you want”

“Aw, fuck that- I’d rather eat with y’all if it’s OK”

So that’s how I had lunch with Bo Diddley. He was really cool- we shot the shit for awhile, and he told me that he hated doing corporate gigs being background music for rich people, but the money was too good to pass up. I told him I completely understood.

The gig itself was predictably boring. The entertainment is never the primary focus at events like these, it really is just like muzak. Bo was playing with a pickup function band from Denver, and like all such bands they were lame as a three legged horse. He had a couple new songs he was doing, and he was visibly frustrated that no one was paying any attention to his performance, and that his band wasn’t capable of generating any enthusiasm anyway.

Then, he broke a string. They finished up the song, and Bo started to restring. The FOH engineer (I was just a stage tech that night) muted his mic, but Bo was playing through a (rented) JC120. Just as he started to tune up, he cranked that thing wide open.JC120s are very, very loud. Bo then serenaded the monied elite of Aspen with his own special version of that old Chinese folk song Tu Ning for about five minutes. Every time he got the tuning close, he’d knock it out again and start over. It was hilarious. People started clapping their hands over their ears and storming out, and in the end, he pretty much cleared the hall.

He wasn’t done, though. After giving up on tuning (it was even more out of tune than when he’d started), he started beating on the guitar. He wasn’t really playing notes or chords, it was just a percussive roar of pure aggression. It sounded like a jet engine about to explode- Sonic Youth had nothing on this. Then, he stepped up to the mic and started screaming. No lyrics or melody, just a primal wail with a few choice profanities thrown in.The guys in the pickup band looked like deer in a spotlight. They just froze in horror as retirement age Bo started careening across the stage, duckwalking and doing Pete Townshendesque windmills. Finally, the drummer started in with the trademark Bo Diddley beat, and the other guys joined in. Bo then started playing slide with his mic stand. It was an apocalypse of explosive cacophony.

Finally, Bo leaned his guitar against the amp and stormed off stage. The guitar screamed with feedback for about a minute until the guitarist with the pickup band switched the amp off. I have never seen anything that embodied the pure rebellious spirit of rock & roll more than Bo Diddley did that night in Aspen. Rest in peace, brother.

Meet Sven Olof.

So here’s what’s been on my pea-sized brain lately…

My fellow high school chums are starting to network on FecesBook.  Allow me to say that high school, in general, was not one of the higher points in my life for a list of reasons tl/td to even address.  So happy was I to get the phuck out of there, I passed on any/all possibilities to go out and get teenage-wasted and managed to beat my parents back to the house post commencement.

Anyhoooo…getting in touch with some of my fellow asylum inmates has been a blast.  Truly.  I’m thrilled to learn that so many are happy and doing well with their lives.

On the other hand - I have come to the sick realization that some people simply will not evolve.  And I find that tragically sad, particularly given the fact that I graduated from the loony-bin 19 years ago.

Now, as most are aware, my first recourse would be to make a total mockery of them.  After all, if you’re so intellectually stunted that you want to revisit drama from 19 years ago, you’re asking for it.  Not only do I deem that free therapy (out of the kindness of my cold heart) but I feel it’s my public obligation to out tossers.  That and I derive a perverse pleasure from rubbing someone’s face in their own poo.

As it stands, I’m keeping mum.  For now.  Watching the train slowly wreck.  It wasn’t worth my time in 1989 and I don’t think it’s worth my time in 2008.

Then again - there is always that fit of boredom that drives me to do very, very naughty things on the internets.

When Dock Ellis graduated from high school, he flipped off his entire graduating class and lobbed his mortarboard at the principal (I had, erroneously, relayed to a friend that it was the superintendent.  He did not hurl his cap at him, he simply rebuked a handshake).  Once he was done making his statement, he left commencement early, diploma in hand and zero desire to return to the past.

If it wasn’t for the fact that some of the people I grew up with weren’t right cool - I should be doing the same.