Don't Piss In My Pocket And Tell Me It's Raining
25 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 11 years ago - ★★★★★ - 4 ratings(Burning the Emperor's New Clothes)
Non-Aligned Political Thought
Political Incorrectness
Rabid assaults on hypocrisy and mediocrity, no matter who it annoys...
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Episodes
The Minefield of Abortion
October 14, 2012 19:56I waded into a discussion on abortion on Facebook and got slammed. I was called a ‘republican troll’ a misogynist, a Neanderthal, and worse. What was my sin? Was I promoting abortion’s abolition? Was I spouting pseudo-scientific apocrypha that women who are raped secrete a special chemical that prevents pregnancy? No, I was speaking honestly about my unease with late-term abortions. Between thrown insults, one young woman said: my decision whether and when to have an abortion is between me a...
Band Aids for Machine Gun Wounds
January 18, 2012 15:09Band Aids for Machine Gun Wounds There has been widespread outrage in response to a video showing US Marines urinating on the corpses of their dead Taliban adversaries. I’m not sure how much of the indignation is genuine and how much is pro-forma, but it’s all hypocrisy. Don’t misunderstand: I do not find the desecration of the dead to be a trivial affair. I just feel the irony of the canard that war can be inherently civilized to be nauseating. I could point out that the Taliban, who wer...
This is What a Police State Looks Like
November 28, 2011 23:14This is what a police state looks like. I am mad as hell. The images of police brutalizing peaceful demonstrators with batons, concussion grenades, teargas, and pepper spray has engendered an all-consuming rage within me. I detest bullies. I detest brutality. I detest the complacency that most Americans seem to feel when someone with whom they disagree with politically is deprived of their constitutional rights. For many, it goes beyond complacency – many actually approve of the brutalizatio...
9-11, ten Years On
November 28, 2011 23:07The tenth anniversary of 9-11 passed, and again I mourned. I mourned the thousands killed in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington that day, but I mourned for much, much more. I mourned the thousands of American and allied troops who’ve paid with their lives, fighting not to make America more safe, certainly not more free, but to secure Western hegemony. I mourned the hundreds of thousands innocent men, women and children who’ve been left homeless and destitute, been tortured, terrified, tr...
Noble Savage
June 10, 2011 13:57Recently I attended a very touching world-prayer service at a church in Woodstock. Representatives of all of the major faiths spoke and prayed. Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Native Americans prayed together for peace, and for the healing of the earth, especially the Gulf of Mexico. I was very touched by the earnest and forthright prayers from all of those present, but one presentation, though equally well intentioned, stuck in my craw nonetheless. A women who is actually from E...
Chimps and Bonobos Redux
June 10, 2011 13:42Recently a video of scantily clad seven-year-old girls gyrating and pelvic-thrusting to a Beyonce track went viral. I saw it on the Huffington Post, clicked on the link, and was almost instantly mortified. I never got through more than about 20 seconds of it, because I became instantly nauseated at what I saw – a group of girls in hot red ‘stripper-kinis’ thrusting their ‘busts’, butts out and writhing suggestively. It didn’t matter that the little girls were obviously talented dancers. What...
Monsanto Is Satan (Part *2* of a 10,000 part series...)
April 04, 2011 14:14Apsartame, better known as Nutrasweet, or AminoSweet, and its new cousin, Neotame, a much larger, much sweeter, and potentially even more toxic update of the Aspartame molecule, are all over the place. Virtually everything you put in your mouth labeled ‘sugarless’ or ‘diet’ contains these pernicious, toxic substances. Nutrasweet’s original manufacturer was Searle corp. They tried to get Nutrasweet declared safe for consumption, but the body of evidence against it was too strong. In the lab, ...
Monsanto Is Satan (Part 1 of a 10,000 part series...)
March 23, 2011 20:26High on my special list of pathologically destructive corporations is Monsanto. Though their sins are legion, I’m going to focus on perhaps their most evil activity of all – their attempt to control virtually all farmers and all crop seeds, and to force those same farmers to use their genetically altered crops and toxic agri-chemicals. Although this is hard to believe, farmers have been successfully sued by Monsanto when Monsanto’s genetically-modified soybean and canola plants have shown up...
Imagine
December 24, 2010 18:40Writing commentaries has turned me into a sort of semi-professional curmudgeon. It's pretty easy too, since the world does indeed appear to be going to hell in a handbasket. Nonetheless, it's getting to be a drag. So, I'm going to try something new today. I'm going to try imagining a better future for America, and, by extension, the world. True, in imagining what could be, I will once more be underscoring how far we are from such lovely dreams. Envisioning a better future can't help but evok...
Sunlight
December 13, 2010 12:27Sunlight is the best disinfectant. It’s a cliché, because it’s true. The massive trove of hidden data about American foreign policy that has been coming out in bunches from WikiLeaks over the last year is one huge application of disinfectant, a vast searing beam spotlighting American cynicism, malfeasance, murder, manipulation and mayhem, once again demolishing our self-righteous stand as a beacon the world over for justice, liberty, and democracy. America has sold itself so thoroughly on ...
Drill, Obama, Drill!
December 03, 2010 15:19Obama just gets worse and worse. It’s hard for me to believe, but now our president is apparently coming out in support of fracking, the natural gas extraction technology that pollutes the air with volatile organic compounds, and ground water and aquifers with neurotoxins and carcinogens, wastes prodigious amounts of fresh water, and produces noise pollution so violent, it has caused broken eardrums among those living near fracking drill sites. This is a palpably ironic state of affairs. F...
The Training of Sheep
November 22, 2010 11:17When I travel by air, I politely endure the TSA security checks. But I’m not willing to give up my civil rights because of fear of terrorism. As Ben Franklin said, those who would sacrifice liberty for security, deserve neither. What’s going on at airports around the country is starting a groundswell of outrage. Consider the following: An eight year old boy is partially strip-searched in public. A man with bladder cancer, who went out of his way to tell TSA officers that his urine bag an...
Big Government: Boogieman
February 15, 2010 12:03Big government is the new boogieman. Or should I say the old one. Ronald Reagan famously said that government is the problem, and this simplistic statement has found resonance with generations of conservatives, from the greedy elites, who adore the fallacies of trickle-down economics, to the angry populists of the tea party movement. When it comes to the tea partiers, their new-found hysteria over deficits underscores how well they’ve been manipulated by the likes of Beck and Hannity, becaus...
Am I a Commie or A capitalist?
December 19, 2009 14:25My car is festooned with bumper stickers. Some favorites include “Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers”, “Alternative Energy is Homeland Security” and “These Colors Don’t Run… the World”. This last one in particular seems to provoke the ire of right wingers. Recently I picked up a new deer rifle at a local sporting goods store. As I returned to my car, I found a note on the windshield that said “Expletive you and your Expletive Commie Bumper Stickers”. It also had a rather fetching smil...
The Welfare State
December 05, 2009 13:57I have a friend. She’s been a self-employed craftsperson involved in home construction and renovation for 25 years down in South Carolina. For all those years she’s paid her taxes and social security, her own health insurance, and reared a son largely as a single mother. Recently, her business has all but disappeared due to the recession and the housing crisis. She was having trouble paying the mortgage, so she decided to seek help. She’d had her first workshop in a rundown part of town, ...
Obama Sells Out
December 01, 2009 16:32Shortly after Obama was inaugurated, I wrote a commentary that was quite critical of his economic team, which was composed of the very people who had created the financial crisis in the first place. I ended the commentary by suggesting that the age of Obama was starting to sound more like ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’ than ‘a change is gonna come’. But disillusioned as I’d become about his domestic agenda, I still hoped that Obama would shine on foreign policy – that he might tr...
The Other Healthcare Crisis
November 15, 2009 19:43There’s more than one healthcare crisis in this country. Of course, there’s the issue of coverage for everyone, but another crisis is exemplified by just how callous, narrow-minded, and often ineffectual our current medical system is. 17 years ago I was paralyzed from the neck down with a crushed spinal cord and brain damage. Thankfully, my total quadriplegia was short-lived and through both hard work and good luck I was able to recover most of my previous abilities. But the sad truth was t...
Our Embedded Media
October 24, 2009 10:26Recently there was an article on natural gas extraction in the NY Times. It was basically a cheerleading essay on how the wonderful new technology of ‘fracking’ was going to exponentially increase the world’s natural gas supply. There was not one single word in the entire article about this technology’s serious environmental repercussions – from its use of large quantities of highly toxic chemicals, to the truly incredible quantities of water it requires. This led me to think more and more a...
Chimps and Bonobos
October 20, 2009 12:15Humankind’s two closest genetic relatives are the Chimpanzee and the so-called ‘pygmy chimp’, the Bonobo. We share some 97% of our genetic makeup with both of them. This is a vast oversimplification, but in general, Chimpanzee society tends to be male-dominated and violent. Chimps engage in brutal fights, gang rape, genocide, even cannibalism. Their society is highly stratified, with dominant males at the top and lesser males at the bottom. Although females also have dominant and lesser repr...
Psycho Pundits
September 06, 2009 14:55In recent months, The psychotic sophistries of right wing pundits have gone gonzo. It’s as if losing the election has blown their minds. First, there was Sean Hannity’s ‘tree of liberty’. I defy any sane adult to not fall down laughing after viewing it. Mr. Hannity shows us an old-timey illustration of the tree of liberty, complete with roots named Liberty, Freedom, etc, combining into a strong trunk. Above this trunk there are apples, named commerce, security etc. Then Mr. Hannity tells us ...
The Outrage Over Lockerbie
August 30, 2009 11:52The DJ on my car radio was incensed. The Lockerbie bomber had been released. My first thoughts echoed his: it was indecent that this killer was not only released, but received a hero’s welcome back home in Libya. Yes, I admit it; I’m just not that forgiving a guy. I don’t think a terminally-ill mass murderer should be released on compassionate grounds so that he might spend his last days with friends and family. If he truly is guilty, he deserves to spend his last days, his last breath, rotti...
Crush Rambo's History of the Liberal (A Ken Burns style mockumentary)
August 22, 2009 20:27Audio only, folks. Someday, I'll add the Burns-like pan and scan of historical photos, maybe for next April Fools Day, but for now... enjoy wit yer ears! And... if you listen past the end. there are 2 bonus tracks, including the game show 'You Can't Prove a Negative'! Powered by Podbean.com All Content Worldwide Copyright - Samuel McKenney Claiborne
Country Gone Mad (Bye Bye Democracy...)
August 22, 2009 19:26Suddenly, the tea parties are old news. The freak-out de jour is healthcare, and people are so profoundly ignorant about the issue that one woman begged the President not to let the government take over Medicare. ‘Scuse me mam, but just who do you think administers Medicare, the tooth fairy? This is, of course, not the organically-grown ‘grassroots’ movement the conservative commentators are crowing as a fine example of democracy. It’s funded by special interests, and carried to the people o...
Dalai Lama - Fundamentalist
August 18, 2009 16:34The Dalai Lama – revered by many as a highly-enlightened being, a paragon of virtue, someone for us all to emulate. But is he really so enlightened, or is his vision of humankind prejudiced? In his ironically-entitled book "Beyond Dogma," he wrote that "homosexuality, whether it is between men or between women, is not improper in itself. What is improper is the use of organs already defined as inappropriate for sexual contact." His form of Tibetan Buddhism, though not all forms of Buddhism,...
Democracy - it's scarier than you think...
June 22, 2009 17:47How responsible are we for our country’s actions? The US government has deliberately done the following: Spied on its citizens, jailed them without benefit of council, flouted the rule of Habeas Corpus, a fundamental human right which dates all the way back to the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, bombed and massacred civilians, overthrown peaceful, democratically-elected governments and mined the harbors of nations with which it was not at war, tortured prisoners, beaten people demonstrati...